


What the Pawn Shop Gave Me

by gaypasta



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Character Turned Into a Zombie, Fae & Fairies, Fae!Hyunjin, Family Dynamics, Found Family, Ghost!Lee Minho, Human/Vampire Relationship, Jisung is adopted into the SKZ Clan, M/M, Murder Mystery, Rating May Change, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, Undead!Seo Changbin, Vampire!Bang Chan, Vampires, Witch!Felix, human! seungmin, human!jisung, witch!jeongin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29334447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaypasta/pseuds/gaypasta
Summary: Trouble has its way of following Jisung. He just wanted to take over his Aunt's pawn shop and now he's accidentally stumbled into some type of  supernatural clan. It's dangerous - with Lee Minho's frightful past or whatever the hell Changbin and Felix have going on.Trouble may find Jisung, but at least Kim Seungmin finds him first.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Han Jisung | Han/Kim Seungmin, Lee Felix/Seo Changbin
Comments: 62
Kudos: 81





	1. Blood Bags

**Author's Note:**

> As promised! Here is my Seungsung fic that has been in the works for a while! I have some chapters written, and I *intended* on publishing it all at once, but I was too excited! T T  
> This is Seungmin/Jisung centered, the other pairings are background pairings. (Although there is a spinoff or two planned).
> 
> I have never written a Supernatural-themed AU of any kind, so please let me know if there's anything I can improve on or detail a little more. This is a mystery story, the topic of which will become clear in Chapter 3/4. ((this fic is tagged as slow burn because I'm incapable of doing literally anything else I'm sorry)). 
> 
> *******This fic does deal with murder and violence (Not super heavily detailed! But exercise caution if you need to) as well as bigotry towards the supernaturals, use of fake-slurs, and corruption. 
> 
> A breakdown of Content Warnings will be displayed in the notes of each chapter! *******

The normal response to a letter sent by an estranged, eclectic Aunt asking her nephew; who has a stable job, a good house, and a perfectly normal life - to take over her pawn store, which by all rumours of the locals, is absolutely haunted and riddled with rabies, would be ‘no thank you Auntie, see you at Christmas.’ But apparently, drunk Jisung is an enthusiastic mail opener and an even more enthusiastic respondent. By the time Jisung had even worked up the courage to write to tell his endearingly strange aunt that this is all a big misunderstanding, the deed and relevant paperwork had been dumped on his front doorstep and his aunt had migrated to some tropical foreign country.

Some say she was on the run from the government, others said she was joining a hippie nudist colony, which - ew. Either way, Jisung was now the lovingly reluctant owner of a pawn shop and its subsequent apartment. 

Originally, Jisung had planned to clear the place out, clean it up and sell it to the highest bidder. He was pretty well cemented in his career at this point, and he had  _ just _ installed a new hardwood floor throughout his home which had significantly dented his savings account. He couldn’t uproot his entire life for a  _ pawn shop _ \- nevermind one small enough to spit across. 

And that’s  _ exactly _ what Jisung’s spontaneous, stupid brain decided to do. 

He packed his shit, sold everything that couldn’t fit in the apartment, and moved to the back-ass of nowhere. He’d watched the wrong inspiring TED Talk about ‘starting afresh’ at the wrong time, and now he has to figure it out from here. 

The apartment upstairs is well-kept, probably worse-kept since Jisung arrived, but it’s hard to keep such a small space tidy, you know. There is a medical skeleton in the living space with its head removed, which is an interesting choice of decor that Jisung feels compelled to keep. The store itself appears to be an unorganised archive of - what to Jisung’s untrained eye can only see as - shit. And yet, by some act of benevolence by a higher power, the store does well. Sure, Jisung might not have a clue what anything he is selling is, but the people buying it sure do, and are all too eager to hand over the money labelled on the objects. 

“What is this?” Jisung asks the strange old lady who wandered in with a suspiciously large handbag full of trinkets. She hands over some ornate aftershave bottles, a battered old wedding ring, and a suspicious looking skull. 

“An art project,” She replies in a sweet little old lady voice. “It should sell for around ₩500,000.” Jisung clamps his mouth shut, slaps a sticker on its forehead and hastily shoves it into a shelf corner beside an equally creepy stuffed bear that Jisung  _ swears _ is following him with its eyes. The little bell on the door rings, signaling her departure. “Hey! How much do you want for the urn?” Jisung shouts, tripping over a collection of aged wicker baskets. The old lady stops in her tracks and waves him off.

“Oh child, I’m just happy to be rid of him.” 

Then she leaves and Jisung lights every prayer candle he can find (which is a surprising number) and  _ prays _ harder than he had ever prayed in his life.

The first days occur as such. Some people will come in and buy weird little trinkets, and others will come in to sell even weirder little trinkets. Jisung isn’t entirely sure if the prices he is marking are even anywhere in the ballpark, but no one seems to bat an eyelid no matter the price of anything. Seems to defeat the purpose of a pawn shop, if you ask him. 

Four days into his ownership, three precariously placed novelty teapots smashed, a taxidermied rabbit that Jisung  _ swears _ keeps moving around the eclectic shop, a growing empire of opals later, Jisung is starting to get the hang of it.

After opening an ornate box which was - for some reason - filled with what, grass? Jisung made the executive decision to attempt to bring some order to the store. He cleared all the shelves, dusted, scrubbed, all the lovely little housekeeping duties, and then made an attempt to sort the mind-bending types of stock into categories. Should taxidermied rats go alongside the stuffed animals, or with the urns? These are the questions that keep him up these nights.

Jisung was half-way through trying to make sense of an armful of little flowers and twigs tied together (with an endearing little pink bow) when the bell rings out. Followed by the squeaky floorboard. Followed by a bright sneeze. 

Jisung stuffs the little fauna wrappings into the pocket of his weathered apron. He found it hanging in his Aunt’s - no,  _ his _ \- closet and figured it would be a sensible addition to his uniform to prevent his clothes getting coated in… whatever the concoction of dust and dirt swirling through the air is. He steps out from the shelving to greet the customer, who seems to be looking through his shelves with a frown.

“Anything in particular you’re looking for?” Jisung asks politely. When the boy turns around, Jisung flusters. He’s  _ cute. _ The cute boy smiles - oh, quell thy beating heart. 

“You must be Auntie’s nephew! She mentioned that you would be taking over the shop.” Oh boy - his voice does not match his face. Jisung takes his extended hand and tries to pretend that his palms are less sweaty than they actually are. He isn’t usually a bumbling fool around pretty boys - he’s spent nights with a fair few of them - but every customer he’s seen this far had been a strong breeze away from falling into their grave. 

“That’s me,” He says. The boy smiles with his eyes, eyes dotted with rhinestones and red shimmer. It’s enchanting and Jisung can’t help but follow his gaze around the shelves of the shop. “I’m just doing some rearranging. Sorry about the mess. And the dust. And the dirt-” He gestures to the entire backdrop, “Just pretend all this isn’t here. It’s an illusion.” 

“Oh -” The boy’s face falters, “You’re rearranging things?” He lets out a breath of air through his nose when he notices the placement of a heavy purple crystal beside a flat, white-ish one. 

“Do you come here often? Is this going to disrupt you or -” Jisung begins rambling. Typical of him - he would jump and put everything back in its unrightful place if this boy says so. A bright smile cuts him off.

“No - of course not! I’ll be able to sense where everything I need is, anyway. This layout will probably make more sense to the humans. Seungmin will probably have something to say about it though.” 

“Uhh… humans?” Jisung laughs. “Well I don’t have many animal customers, so I guess the humans will have to manage.” 

The boy considers him greatly. From his scuffed sneakers to his dust-laden hair, then his mouth twists somewhere between a smile and a frown. “Ah, so you’re a temp? Auntie never told us you were a temp. It's strange that it didn't run in the family..”

“I-I work here full-time? I’m the owner now.” The boy only laughs at his confusion. He takes his hat from his head and fixes his hair, then puts it back on. 

“Could you show me where your tiger’s eye and turquoise is? And some rosewater if you have it.” 

“Uh…” Jisung looks at him a little blankly. Turquoise…… a rock, right? One of the rocks. He ushers the boy over into the back shelf, its spread of rocks and crystals and pebbles far from the customers’ eyes - it was near impossible to stock them without it looking messy. Jisung steps over a box, and the boy follows him over without even looking down at his feet. 

The boy sucks on a smile. “Ah, at the back of the store? Away from the moonlight?” 

Is this kid on something? He’s been saying weird shit since he came in. Maybe he’s just back from a rave, it would make sense considering the makeup. Although the innocuous jeans and dress-shirt seem to say otherwise. 

“It’s like, noon,” Jisung eyes for anything breakable nearby, in case the boy takes a turn for the worst. The boy only smiles at him and immediately picks up a pair of weirdly coloured rocks. “And… rosewater right?” Jisung leads him to a shelf behind the till, stocked full of weird little jars with droppers and stoppers and all sorts of weird coloured-liquid. “I’m not really sure which one is-”

“It’s the one with the tassel around the stopper in the crystal bottle.” 

Jisung gives him an odd look, but reaches the rosewater down and starts ringing the boy up. Does this say ₩3000 or ₩8000? Seriously, Auntie. The least you could have done to prepare was make sure your prices were either consistent or legible. It  _ almost  _ looks a little more like an 8 -

“Hey - who’s this?” The boy is holding the skull by its jaw, making puppeting motions with it. 

_ “WHO?  _ Not what - who?!” 

The boy fingers the nose hole and trails his little hands over the skull - “Hey Minho, is this you?” 

Okay - this kid is seriously on some sort of hallucinogens. This kid had been the first customer all day, so he knew for a fact that there was no one else in the store. The only people in the store at the minute is this weird boy, Jisung, and the weird stuffed bear that is  _ looking _ at him. 

“Does that look like me?” A cold breeze licks over Jisung’s skin, like the slinking hand of death. He drops to the floor in shock, only poking his head up to look around to make sure he wasn’t  _ actually _ going to die.    
A semi-translucent figure meets his eyes. 

Hello, God? It’s Han Jisung. I think I might be taking a fast-pass to joining the cloud community. 

The figure turns from him, entirely disinterested, and floats over to the other boy, who is making the skull talk to the figure.

“Look, Minho - it’s me! Your head!” 

The figure slaps the boy upside the head - his hand phases right through. Jisung could faint. “Look at its brow bone, Felix - now look at mine. Do I look like a god-damn Neanderthal to you?” The boy - Felix - puts the skull back, pulling a smug, nose-scrunching face at the - the - 

“What the fuck are you?!” 

The spector turns to him, offended. “ _ Excuse me?!” _ The room drops a couple of significant degrees. Jisung cowers back under the table, then peeks his eyes over. Minho - the ghost - the whatever - has his arms crossed, looking entirely nonplussed with the interaction. “Just tell us the price of the stuff so we can leave.” 

Jisung had never filed a transaction so quickly in his life. 

  
  


Jisung is still shaken up by the evening. He finds himself looking over his shoulder constantly on the entire walk to the store. The town is… small. A little outdated. He passes store fronts of houses that should have been torn down and rebuilt decades ago. Even the lamp posts are huge wooden things, splintering from missing cat posters and advertisements. 

Jisung buys little food, only enough to last him a couple of days. He was planning on installing some new appliances to the kitchen. The gas stove is confusing and every time he uses it, he finds himself jolting awake in the middle of the night to double, triple, quadruple check that he had turned it off. 

He approaches the check out with a small jar of coffee, a bag of chips, a pack of sliced American cheese and ten packets of instant noodles. 

The clerk, a bespeckled woman, grey hair growing tastefully into brunette. She scans his items with little thought, until her eyes catch the tote bag Jisung is using to hastily shove his food into while trying to keep up with her pace. It’s an old but sturdy thing that Jisung found lying around with the shop’s name on it. Nothing special - but enough to catch this lady’s eye, apparently. 

“You must be the new owner of the pawn shop, right?” The lady smiles at him expectedly, and he nods. 

“I moved in earlier this week, ma’am.” 

“Well,” The lady crossed her manicured hands over each other, “Ms. Han certainly was a character. Is it true that she invested in an oil company and stuck millions? She’s moving to avoid the taxes, I heard.” 

Jisung blinked. I mean, it _could_ be true. These people definitely know his Auntie better than he does - considering the most communication he had with her prior to taking over the store was a yearly birthday card - always a week late. 

“I think she moved to the Carribean.” Jisung takes his wallet out of his pocket to pay the subtotal flashing on the little screen. 

The lady leans in, ignoring Jisung’s credit card, “So - has the store been going well? Some residents were wary of someone else taking over. It’s an important part of our little town, however eclectic it may be. It’s been around as long as I can remember.” 

“Uh… yeah! It’s actually doing better than I expected a pawn shop in the middle of nowhere - uh- no offense!” Jisung drops his chips in his fumbling. “I just mean - I’m from Seoul, you see. This town is very small-” 

The lady laughs and cuts him off with a nonchalant wave of the hand. “Don’t worry darling. It’s not often we get city people here, you’re interesting. I’m sure that you’ll bring a professional twist to the place. Ms. Han was harmless, but she certainly had a couple of skeletons in her closet.” 

Jisung thinks of the skeleton in the corner of his living room. _Oh lady, you’ve no idea._ But also - Jisung kind of has no idea. What anyone is talking about. Ever. 

“Professional twist?” 

“Oh you know,” She waves her hand, “Doing things by the books. No seedy underhanded transactions or… clientele.” 

Jisung makes to ask her what, pray, the fuck she is talking about, but he is interupted as she tells him to insert his card into the busted card reader. It takes three times for his chip to read. 

“I was meant to stop by your store earlier today but I saw you were with...customer.” Her face soured enough that Jisung accidentally entered the wrong passcode and had to start over. “Do you have any crucifixes in stock? Preferably ones with _the_ engraving on them.” 

Jisung carefully punched in his passcode and waited for the transaction to clear. “We have a decent collection of religious items including rosary beads, prayer candles, busts-” 

“No - I mean …” She looks around sharply and whispers, “You know… for the fangers.” 

Jisung pulls his card and puts it back into his wallet. He finds himself looking over his shoulder too. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking for - the _ghost_ maybe.

“Fangers? I don’t know what you mean. Is it a branch of Christianity?” 

The woman looks him up and down - even the whole way down to his scuffed boots, then tears the receipt out of the printer and tosses it in his direction, her face twisted into something like mirth. “Nevermind. I’ll find what I’m looking for myself, the new moon isn’t until next week, I have a few days.” She says mostly to herself, then her sharp eyes fall on Jisung and he feels a lot like a child at the principal's office. “You kids these days. Always so focused on being politically correct. I thought a city boy would be more mature for his age, but apparently not.” 

Jisung takes his instant noodles and chips and exits the store with a curt nod, a weak thank you, and a sinking feeling that maybe he should have stayed in Seoul. 

Seriously - it’s one weird thing after another. As if the entire ‘pawn shop; thing isn’t weird enough - the stock that sells is so bizarre Jisung can’t even begin to understand what sort of niche interests he’s apparently catering to. Hippies? Goths? Little old ladies? Pawn shops are meant to be for wedding rings from divorced couples, old radios, ugly Christmas jumpers - not random bunches of flowers and sticks, or rows of little scented liquids. 

Jisung tries not to think about it too much on his walk home. The tote bag is bulging and weighing heavily on his shoulder. He tries to adjust it to make it a little more comfortable but no dice. Maybe if he took out some of the ramen and put them in his jacket pocket… 

The flash of black in front of him startles him more than the low-timbred snarling. He barely registers the speedy, hulking black mass as a dog until he hears the deep, gut-shaking boofs directed at _him._ Jisung wasn’t scared of dogs - but this dog is… weird. He can’t make out any features, only black, despite Jisung standing right beside one of the streetlamps. The black mass seems almost to flicker around the edges - which in the moment of life-or-death suddenly reminds Jisung that he is due an opticians appointment. 

Right before the beast jumps, before Jisung’s life is cut so terribly short, a figure bursts out of the alleyway that the dog came from, collar and lead in hand and calling frantically, “Kkami!” 

The dog turns on its owner, snarls, and takes off down the direction Jisung had been walking from. Jisung almost collapses against the lamppost in relief - his pulse still skyrocketing. 

“Kkami! Wait-” The boy shouts then pulls his blonde hair in frustration. “Stupid mutt!” He yells

An echoing growl answers back, and the boy bows in the direction of the noise “Sorry - sorry. Sorry, Kkami.” 

He waits for a moment, then seemingly satisfied at the lack of response, he pulls his hair into a short ponytail and stretches out his hamstrings with an unamused look on his face.

“Should have gotten a cat,” Jisung says, breathless and pale. Dark eyes turn on him. Behind the darkness, mischief glitters, sparks of gold and silver dance. Jisung suddenly wants to befriend this man. He can help him - his face is a trustworthy one, one of kindness and generosity - there is no way such a man could ever betray him- 

A laugh cuts him off, then suddenly Jisung’s brain catches up to him and despite him having not said anything aloud, he looks away, embarrassed at his own thoughts. “We have enough strays living in my house.” 

And just like that, the boy was off. His steps and gait enticing enough that Jisung hadn’t realised he’d been following him with his eyes until he turned a corner at the butcher’s and disappeared from view. Jisung shakes himself. First the boy - Felix, and now this stranger? Jisung isn’t one for becoming infatuated or making a fool of himself in front of handsome men - what gives? It’s like the men here are enticing, luring him in. Maybe it’s been too long since he’s jerked off. 

When Jisung makes himself his noodles, he eats it alone, with all the lights in the building switched on, looking over his shoulder lest he comes face-to-face with the spector once again. 

  
  


Sunday mornings, Jisung discovers, are quiet. Not a soul so much as walks past his shop front, so he patiently makes an effort to clean up his apartment a little. The shop is small enough that if Jisung leaves the ‘STAFF ONLY’ door at the bottom of the stairs as well as his apartment door open, then he can hear the bell of the door perfectly fine. 

It isn’t much of a chore, really. Just washing some dishes, putting away some laundry (which he has to go to an actual _laundrette_ to do - he feels like he’s in some type of coming of age movie set in the 90’s), opening the windows and letting the aged smell that lingers in the shop out. He even dusts the skeleton. Poor thing deserves a head. 

He clears up the impressive tower of instant ramen containers that had been slowly growing taller on the countertop and with a brave arm, topples them into a bin bag. He misses and they go all over the floor. 

After his sprint of spring cleaning, Jisung drags the bin bags down stairs, shutting his apartment door behind him, just in case an eager customer sneaks in and … looks at Jisung’s things. He doesn’t have much to steal up there. Maybe the battered microwave. 

Kicking open the back door, Jisung’s foot catches something and he almost goes head over ass. After tossing the bin bags in the general direction of the dumpster, Jisung finally has free hands to look over the pallet of _shit_ at his back entrance. 

A wooden pallet, carrying sacks, jars, boxes, all sorts - all packaged differently and all lacking any description of what’s inside, who it’s from - absolutely void of anything useful. Since when did pawn shops get _deliveries?_ Jisung rips open a padded envelope and shakes out the contents: more goddamn stones. 

Jisung huffs and pockets the stones in his jacket for now, focusing his attention on the cardboard boxes. The clouds hang heavy and fat, threatening rain. Jisung carts everything into the shop, walking the extra distance to dump it all behind the register. He drops a sack of… something, which makes more of an impact than expected and causes a delicately positioned framed photo of Jesus to topple to the ground. “I know - day of rest, yadda yadda. It’s not my fault they dumped this on me - I mean, who delivers on _Sundays?_ ” Jisung picks the picture up and tosses it onto the register’s countertop. 

When he picks up the final sack, he discovers a decent sized rectangle of something wrapped in copious amounts of saran wrap, so thick that it’s opaque.

Jisung has to drag the thing into the shop, then grabs some knife from the shelf and uses its blunted and damaged blade to hack through the saran wrap. It’s more of a workout than Jisung would like to admit, but sweaty and a little red-faced, the mystery item is… a cooler! 

Jisung considers a list of things that the cooler could contain; fancy juices, food, more god damn rocks - but none of them came close to the actual answer, which even took Jisungs brain a solid minute to figure out the realities of the scene before him.

The cooler is filled with medical bags of blood. All labeled all professional-like. For some deranged reason Jisung pokes a bag labelled _A-_ and flinches back at the jelly-like response and ripple of the bag. So Jisung does what any other sensible, sharp-minded individual would do: he shuts the lid, slides it under the register, and decides that it’s a problem for _future_ Jisung to deal with. Because _present_ Jisung has a metric fuck-ton of rocks to put away. 

When the phone rings, Jisung drops the bag of flora on the floor, petals and pollen now coating the floorboards. Great - sure, why not. Jisung, in defense of his squirrelly response, had _seen_ the odd rotary dialled phone and assumed it was for sale. He hastily steps over the mess, rips the price tag off its cord, and picks up.

“Hi, pawn shop. Uh - welcome to the pawn shop - no. This is the pawn shop, Jisung speaking,” Put him in a leotard and sell him to the circus because Jisung is tumbling over sentences like it’s his _job_ today, apparently. The moment of silence from the line lasts hours.

“Uh,” The smooth voice sounds odd from the old phone, like he’s speaking underground. “Is Auntie there?”

“She’s gone,” Jisung says. 

“Oh, she reaped her soul? She mentioned it before but I never actually thought she would go through with it-”

“What?” Jisung interrupts. “No she moved to the Bahamas or somewhere.” 

“Oh,” The boy says, not seeming shocked or relieved, “I think Felix mentioned something about that, come to think of it…” 

Jisung balks at the mention of the other boy, because with him, came the _ghost._ Jisung swivels around so his back is to the wall. Just in case.

“Regardless, I’m enquiring about the blood types available today.”

“The - the what - how did-” Jisung says, intelligently. The sigh on the other side of the phone is distinct.

“They always arrive just before dawn on Sunday mornings.” 

“Oh - I only saw the delivery like an hour ago-” Jisung checked the time on his phone, a decent handful of hours after sunrise. 

“You… you _left_ it there in the open all this time?” The voice scolds, “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is, especially given what time of the month it is-”

“Time of the m- It’s _period blood?!”_

The silence is deafening. 

“Are you qualified to work here.” The voice is flat, tired. As if he’s dealing with a child of some description. This guy is rubbing Jisung up the wrong way.

“I have a bachelor’s degree!” He says defensively.

“In what?” 

“Business!”

The voice snorts. His tone a little lighter now, a little more forgiving, even amused. “The blood should have been put in the refrigerator straight away, but there’s little use doing it now.” There is shuffling on the line, like the voice is repositioning the phone. “Tell me what blood type you have.” 

“I’m B+,” Jisung says. The red, medical waste cooler is eyeing him up. 

“Oh my god,” The voice groans, voice turning somewhat nasal. “In the _cooler._ What blood types are in the cooler.” 

“Oh shit, uh- hang on.” Jisung must have some type of hypnosis affecting him. First Felix, then the boy with the dog, now this guy on the phone? A week in retail has turned him into the perfect servant. Jisung only realises half way through counting bags of _blood_ that he was, well, counting bags of blood for a stranger down the phone. There’s not much he can say now, the guy is humming impatiently and what is he gonna do? _Not_ tell him? Jisung lists the number of each blood type in the cooler, then slams the lid down and kicks the cooler back out of his sight. 

The boy on the line hums tersely. “It’ll have to do. I’ll have to spread it thin. I’ll have to feed Chan myself... at least it’s cool enough weather to wear scarves again…” He trails off, seemingly talking to himself. Jisung hears the noise of pen scratching on paper. “I’ll be around within the hour, Mass finishes soon and I have to have it all delivered by then.”

Just like that - the line cuts off. Jisung stares at the stuffed bear that stares back. What the fuck has he got himself into. 

  
  


Jisung hardly moves from his spot the entire long thirty-minute wait. Whether it’s the creepy stuffed bear, the cooler of blood, or the very real, very sudden confirmation that Jisung’s earlier concerns had been proven correct. And like the lady at the grocery store said: his Auntie apparently was in some shady shit and now Jisung had willingly taken her place and become, himself, involved in some shady shit. 

His eyes stay glued to the door, waiting for some shaven-headed, tattoo-riddled hoodlum to kick the door open, grab him by the scruff of the neck and smuggle the cooler of blood in the back of some imported American muscle car to the black market. 

The bell rings and a boy with chestnut hair, a black cardigan and a delicate little necklace around his neck walks in. With the purposeful way he seeks Jisung out, he relaxes into the wall. It’s just a guy. Just a normal, every day guy. 

The boy, upon finding him, cowering beside the telephone, gives him a reserved smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and offers a handshake. Jisung takes it a little too eagerly - he’s so relieved that he could kiss the boy then and there. He doesn’t - thankfully, for the first time, Jisung is able to restrain himself. 

“You must be Jisung. I’m Kim Seungmin, I’m here to pick up the meals - you can stop shaking my hand now.” 

“Oh - yeah, right-” Jisung lets the boy’s hand go and wipes it on his apron - he hopes his palms aren’t as sweaty as they feel. “Uh- meals?” 

The boy nods, “That’s what we call the blood bags,” He says this as if this is something Jisung should _know._ Because sure - why wouldn’t he!

“Right. Of course. They’re under the counter.” The boy looks to the counter and back, then realises that there is no way in hell that Jisung is going near that god damn cooler. He slides past Jisung with an amused smile and, as if he had been here before, easily squats down and lifts the lid, fingering through the blood bags like it’s a rolodex. 

Not looking particularly satisfied, the boy closes the lid and gets up, fishing for something in his pocket.

“Uh - should I call the police or something?” Jisung asks, half out of his mind in confusion. Seungmin turns to him as if he just asked the most ridiculous, nonsensical question ever. 

“Are you serious?” 

“Um…” Jisung fingers the worn edge of his apron pocket. “Yes?” 

“Oh,” He looks around to find words. “No?” 

“Okay.” Jisung takes the note being handed to him. On it, in neat and delicate handwriting, is a bunch of straight-up gibberish. Jisung blinks at it before handing it back. Seungmin sighs, and moves past Jisung, purposefully down into a corner of the shop.

“What did you do?” The accusing tone jolts Jisung into action, following the boy into the depths of the shop. “Did you…” Seungmin looks around, “Did you _reorganise?”_

Jisung nodded owlishly. Seungmin presses a hand into his weary forehead, taking a calming breath. 

“Did you not think that maybe the way your Auntie had everything displayed was for a very good reason?” He asks steadily. He looks to the left, meets a collection of jewellery and sighs, “Silver rings alongside protection enscripted jewellery…” He shakes his head.

“Felix mentioned you wouldn’t be happy about it - I think,” Jisung says, trying to see exactly what the issue with his organization skills were.

“Let me guess: all the crystals, geodes and other rocks are just piled together - not even ordered by purpose?” 

“Purpose? Like paperweights?” Seungmin doesn’t appear to have the collection within himself to respond, and tediously goes about hunting for the items on his list. Maybe Jisung _should_ have left things the way they were - but _maybe_ this was the kind of thing that Auntie should have warned him about!

Jisung, after having the feeling that him waddling along after Seungmin was only getting in his way, waits patiently behind the register.

Seungmin spends a fairly hefty sum of money on crystals, oils, fragrances, those weird flower bundle things, candles, and a bucket of paint in a mysteriously unlabeled can that was hidden in the recesses of one of the cabinets behind the register. “Renovating?” Jisung asks cheerily as he calculates the total. 

“It’s almost the new moon.” Seungmin says this with a degree of finality, then remembers that Jisung knows nothing. “It’s for protection against the… well, against people.” 

“Paint? Or all of it?” Jisung looks over the collection of random stuff, which Seungmin is now carefully folding into little bundles of linen that had been stashed in his backpack. 

“Most of it,” He says.

Seungmin finishes putting his things away, then hands the money over. 

“Do you want help getting… that into your car?” Jisung asks, pushing the cooler out from under the register with a nervous foot, standing as far back as possible. Seungmin bites a smile and picks it up. His smile shifts into shock when he stands up quickly and almost topples over. 

“I didn’t think it would be so light,” He sours. “I have six hungry mouths to feed for the week with this. They’re cutting us down more and more every week - they’re going to end up sending them into a hunger frenzy-” Seungmin takes a sharp breath to calm himself. “Whatever. Chan fed well last week… so he could take from me for a few days… as long as I get him some next week he’ll be fine - he’s got control over his hunger, moreso than the others…” Seungmin mutters mostly to himself as he walks toward the exit. 

Jisung hops over the counter and holds the door open. Seungmin continues muttering to himself about scarves and puncture wounds as he zips the cooler into what looks like a recycled food delivery bag, and straps the bag firmly to the back of his bicycle. Right before he kicks off, he turns to Jisung, hair billowing over his face in the wind, “I’ll see you next week. Bring the cooler in no later than dawn this time.” And like that - he pedals away, rising his butt off the seat to get good momentum, flying down the street until he’s out of sight.

  
  


Jisung was _more_ than happy to close up shop for the day. Whether or not his appearance shows it, the entire thing leaves him shaken, tight-chested and with a weird fog over his mind that he can’t shake off. This town is weird, this town is bad: is the echo niggling at his brain. Jisung is certain he’s a rung on the black market ladder - but he wants off, he wants to dismount. 

The ghost is one thing - Jisung had always kind of believed in ghosts, so sure, having a ghost materialise right behind him is shit-your-pants-scary, it’s not like it’s gonna _kill_ him. Hopefully. But this black market shit? All he needs to do is piss off the wrong people, or get caught by the police and his life is over - either metaphorically or literally. 

The entire thing makes him feel a little tight-chested. 

Jisung, after a questionable period of time, forces himself into the present and with slightly delirious hands, makes to switch the little neon ‘OPEN’ sign to ‘CLOSED’, but as his finger finds the annoyingly small switch, the bell rings.   
Jisung forces a tight smile at the familiar face.

“Welcome, ma’am,” He says. Straightening himself up and rolling his shoulders. He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the window and tries to flatten his nest of hair.

The lady from the store seems to be taken off-guard that Jisung regards her, but quickly matches his force smile, her’s not reaching her eyes in the slightest. “Hello darlin’, I hope you’ve been keeping yourself well fed.”  
“Yes ma’am.” 

“Oh please,” She cooes. “You can call me Sogang.” 

“Apologies, ma’am, my mother always told me to respect my elders.”

“How...” Her smile seems more of a baring of teeth than much else, “Endearing.” 

“Let me know if you need help finding anything.” 

She nods curtly, adjusting her handbag over her shoulder and begins perusing down the aisles, picking up little trinkets and holding them up against the light of the sun every now and again. Jisung busies himself with arranging the collection of bottles behind them. He has no rhyme or reason for his reorganisation - given that he has no actual clue what any of the liquids are - but he rearranges them partly with what looks best, and partly to have _something_ to do with his hands. 

“I see you’ve reorganised.” 

Jisung looks over his shoulder to the woman, who is hovering around the shelving that Jisung decided to display all the religious stuff on. Except the silver necklace with the cross on it - Jisung stole that one. It looked cool and he deserved some type of payment for his efforts. She is holding an aged, dignified dagger, holding it up to the light and humming in approval when the light highlights few chips. 

Jisung had found the thing tucked away in the back of one of the cupboards - for some reason. It was beautiful. A little molted, maybe, but nothing a little TLC couldn’t fix. The blade, from tip to base, along the fuller, was inscribed with some strange symbols. Maybe some celtic or latin language.

“What is the binding of the inscription?” Jisung told her that he wasn’t sure. The woman seemed unphased. “It looks to be exactly what I’m after, if my memory holds right.” She buys the dagger for a hefty enough price that Jisung was shocked she didn’t even blink at, and takes the dagger, which Jisung _triple_ wraps in bubble wrap and tissue paper, and slips it into her handbag. 

Jisung pops the register and sorts through the bills - then a cold hand cups his cheek.   
“Maybe I judged you too harshly, Jisung. Maybe you are exactly what this town needs to bring it back to tradition. So many youngsters with their fanciful ideas of the world - but they haven’t a clue.” She pats him there. “No caution is without reason, right? This new moon will be significant for us, thanks to you.” 

Jisung has no answer. Her manicured nails drag uncomfortably along his cheek as she moves away, and like that she leaves, leaving Jisung’s pockets much heavier, but his gut a lot colder. 

For an inexplicable reason, Jisung’s churning stomach fails to settle for the remainder of the night, and he ends up eating instant noodles on his battered sofa, looking wistfully out the window at the sliver of the moon. Almost a new moon. The townspeople seem to be obsessed with it. 

As Jisung stares at it, the feeling in his stomach grows worse, and he leaves his noodles half-eaten under the supervision of the headless diorama skeleton as he tries to cram a few hours of sleep on the couch.

  
  


“Do you have any bear traps?” 

The sudden voice behind him makes Jisung drop the armful of rocks. The said voice snorts, then gets down and helps him pick them up. Jisung looks up to be only inches away from the stranger. Seungmin. Wearing endearing checkered pants and a beige jumper, the same little necklace around his neck. A cute little classroom assistant look. Jisung tears his gaze away to continue picking up the stupid, ugly little rocks, muttering angrily to himself. He’s sick of all these crystals and rocks, every time he clears out a cupboard or a drawer, another metric fuck-ton. His thoughts are interrupted with a deep, smooth chuckle that twinkles in his ears. What does that mean? No idea - but the laugh makes the little tiny hairs on the inside of his ears stand to attention. 

“Not a morning person?”

“It’s like, six a.m. Why are you here so early?” 

Seungmin hands him a handful of rocks, Jisung’s hands overflow and the rocks fall back into the floor. Seungmin clearly didn’t think to compare his big hands with Jisung’s delicate ones. He picks a geode up and puts it on the shelf, reaching over Jisung’s shoulder to do so. “I’m on my way home from work, your shop is on the way.” 

“At this time?” Seungmin hums, giving Jisung some of his personal space back. “Where do you work until six am?”

“The grocery store.” 

“It’s 24-hour?!” Jisung gasps. So many midnight cravings for ice cream, so much potential wasted. “Wait, this town is small. Why does it need a 24-grocery store anyway?” Jisung puts the crystals in random order on the shelf. He misses the way Seungmin winces at his haphazard placement.

“A lot of our residents are… nocturnal.” 

Jisung hums. “I feel like that too, sometimes.” Jisung finishes his display, wiping his hands on his apron, sometimes the rocks and stuff leave weird glitter on his hands which takes _ages_ to wash off. “What was it you were looking for?” Jisung asks, flicking wayward hair out of his face.

“Bear traps.” Seungmin’s voice is way too soft to be asking him for _bear traps._

“Uh - no. I have some brass knuckles around here somewhere, though-” Jisung dives headfirst into a huge cardboard box that he had yet to sort through. 

“Why- why would I want brass knuckles?”

“I don’t know… to hunt bears?” Jisung looks over his shoulder. Seungmin looks down at his own body, including his little preppy outfit, then back to Jisung. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. “Well - what are you needing a bear trap for, anyway?” 

“Changbin hasn’t eaten in a while,” He explains as if this means anything to Jisung. “He’s getting hungry, and the hunting guild has cut us off - they think Changbin has been sneaking in and eating their bloodhounds - even though we tell them time and time again that Changbin wouldn’t sneak out and walk ten miles for their gangly mutts. He barely bothers to debone his own meat, for god’s sake.” 

“They - they think your friend ate their _dog?”_ Jisung stands up from the cardboard box. 

Seungmin snaps out of his train of thought and seems to realise something, “Oh - well. I don’t really have the time to explain right now. I have… something to do at home, and I’m running a little short on time.” He says, looking at the sun rising in the sky. 

“You’ll explain it to me though, right?” Jisung asks, a little more desperate than he wants to sound. Seungmin hums, as though he isn’t really listening, and picks up some more crystals and an old, leather bound notebook. 

Jisung rings him up. “So. What is it that’s so important that you need to do at this time of the morning?” Seungmin, who had been looking anxiously at the rising sun, blinks at Jisung.

“I really don’t have time to explain-” Jisung pulls the bag of items out of Seungmin’s reach. 

“Call me then,” Jisung says thinly and scribbles his phone number onto the front of the paper carrier bag. 

“Wh-what?” Seungmin looks from the smudged black ink to Jisung, then back, accosted at the gesture. “I’m flattered but-” 

“Call me and explain. Please. I know you don’t know me, and I don’t know you and if I’m being totally out of line then forgive me, but I’ve been here little over a _week_ and I’ve experienced more weird, creepy shit than I have in my entire life.” Seungmin’s eyes grow wide. “I’m hundreds of miles from home, Auntie didn’t leave me _any_ information and I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s really weird shit going on here that I am completely in the dark about and I don’t feel _safe_!” Seungmin’s face shrinks. His jaw clenches and a part of his face closes off, like Jisung just said something he shouldn’t have. This only rags him further because how the hell is he meant to know what he can or can’t say in this weird place if no one tells him anything!!

“I’m sorry your experience has left you disjointed. I assure you, as we assure everyone here, you’re safe and no one, no matter their walk of life, will lay a finger on you if you treat them with the same level of respect.” Seungmin says this tightly, cool. It’s rehearsed and falls from his lips like a nightly prayer. Jisung wants to tear his hair out.

“This is what I’m talking about! What the fuck does _that_ mean?! You could be some type of serial killer.” 

This seems to blink Seungmin out of it. “Why would I be a serial killer?” He asks genuinely. 

“Oh I don’t know, maybe because you took a cooler full of _blood bags?!”_ Jisung is on the edge of hysteria and Seungmin is just standing there, looking all put-together.

“Surely it would be more suspicious if I was the one who gave you the blood?” Seungmin points out, like this is some sort of analytic debate or something.

“I don’t like you!” Jisung huffs and pushes the bag towards Seungmin because he’s got a point. Seungmin only smiles at him and takes the bag.

“Is that why you gave me your number?” 

Jisung feels the heat rise in his cheeks - not even from _embarrassment -_ this entire situation has got his blood rushing in weird ways, and Seungmin smiling at him like _that_ only exacerbated the problem. Jisung only met the guy _yesterday_ for god’s sake. He blames it on the lack of jerking off - he just _can’t_ do it ever since the ghost. The thought of the spector standing over him while he… you know… makes him feel exposed. 

“I-I- NO! I told you why- I don’t want to- uh-” 

“Seungmin, hurry up. Jeongin is threatening to curse you and I daren’t remind you that the last time he threatened that he actually went through with it.” Jisung falls to the floor with a cry. The spector behind him only raises his eyebrow, unamused. “Are you going to do that everytime?” 

“I think he’s scared of your face, hyung,” Seungmin says to the ghost, completely unphased in the slightest. Although, he does take his cash out of his pocket with a little more haste than would be considered normal.

The spector lifts his cold gaze from Jisung to Seungmin. “Stop flirting and come _on._ Chan hasn’t eaten in _days_ and it’s coming up to the new moon, so he’s going to be exhausted-

“I know. Stop worrying, he’s done more with less.” Seungmin says kindly, and the ghost seems to draw back from Seungmin a little, nodding tightly. Although he still has worry lines in his forehead. 

Jisung doesn’t realise that Seungmin is on his way out the door before the little bell rings and the door makes the sharp sound of the latch clicking into place as it shuts. Suddenly, Jisung finds himself alone with the ghost.

He tries not to let his anxiety get the best of him, but all he can do is look at the ghost, who is peering curiously at the money Seungmin left on the counter. Look _at_ is being generous - look _through_ \- because the spector has a severe transparency to him, so much so that Jisung has trouble detecting his pupils within his irises. 

He feels the sweat beading on his palms, and he tastes it on his upper lip. He isn’t breathing right. Too scared to take a proper breath, until his lungs betray him, and he takes a gasping lungful - which is loud and wet enough to catch the spector’s attention.

“Are you okay?” He asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m dying - wait no - I didn’t-” Jisung wants to end his life immediately. He tries to crack a joke with a ghost - and he makes a _dying_ one? What is wrong with him? Was he dropped on the head-

A laugh cuts him off. Punctuated laughs that trail off at the end, a little echoey - probably a result of the whole ghost thing. “You’re cute. Your Auntie always said you were cute, although she mainly talked about your sticky hands and your chubby baby face… although that seems to have stuck.” 

Jisung brought a hand up defensively to his cheek. Half-way between a laugh and a terror-struck squeal, it’s enough to set the ghost back a few paces.

“I’m a friend of Felix and Seungmin,” He says, a little gentler now, like Jisung is a scared animal he’s trying to soothe. He really isn’t far off. “My name is Minho.”

“H-Hi. Um - you’re a ghost.” 

“Yes.” 

“Is that- is that normal?” He asks. Desperate for any scrap of knowledge. 

“Not at all, at least not to temps.” 

“I work full-time,” Jisung says it unconsciously, like it’s an automatic response. This makes Minho laugh, for some reason.

“Oh, I hope you get to keep your innocence for a long time, it’s sweet,” Minho coos, although the teasing tone doesn’t last for long, as Minho’s body starts to flicker. “Oh shit - I’ve been out too long. I need to go.”

“Invisible?” 

“Yeah - don’t look at me like that, I have better things to do with my afterlife than sit and watch you scratch your ass all day-” 

And like that, the spector blinked out of Jisung’s vision and the pawn shop fell into a pregnant silence. Jisung could only focus on keeping himself standing. This place is going to be the death of him - he’s sure of it. 

Seungmin and Felix are friends with a ghost? How does that even happen, and why are they acting as if that shit is completely normal? In fact, why is Seungmin acting like _any_ of this is completely normal? 

As the day goes on, Jisung considers it all. Over and over again in his head. Maybe the ghost is right. Maybe it is best for Jisung to keep his innocence and his ignorance for as long as he can. If he stays out of it, as much as he is able, at least he can plead plausible deniability. Even now, as Jisung shuts up shop after half a dozen more sales and another bag of weirdly realistic animal bones from a scraggly looking elderly woman, without any clear threats being pushed his way, he is on edge. 

Like something under his skin is buzzing with all this information telling him that he’s in way over his head. Is this how Auntie felt? She opened this shop, so it probably evolved into bizzarity so slow she became complacent to it. Not Jisung. The most bizarre thing in Jisung’s life until now was the neighbour at his old house who would religiously walk his dog at 10P.M, then again at 3a.m. That was _it._

Now he’s got what? A ghost, an uber eats guy for blood, a town that has nocturnal residents, weirdly enticing boys who have glitter on their eyes and lip tint on their mouths? In the city, sure. But in a town where the entire population seems to cram into the huge chapel down on the main street? It feels… weird. Too different from the norm here. Different from all the small-town narratives he’s been fed before. 

So Jisung, in his old, slightly worn pajama pants, makes a decision. The shop is locked up, the moon is creeping into the sky - or it _would_ , if it were visible at all. The new moon that everyone seems so fascinated by, his apartment securely locked and his windows cracked open to let the gentle fall breeze in. Jisung decides to stay out of it.

He’s going to stay out of it.

No more questions, no more raised eyebrows. He’ll sell people their weird things without a blink. He’ll take a worrisome amount of bones without comment. Every Sunday he’ll help Seungmin strap the cooler of blood to his little errand bike. 

On his soul: Jisung will have no active part in any of the ridiculous shenanigans within this town. 

Less than ten minutes later, Jisung is sprinting barefoot down the stairs in response to the sound of squealing rubber, a broken lock, an orchestra of frantic shouting, and a duo of panic-stricken and sweating boys struggling to trail a man across his shopfloor.

Jisung slips on the blood and lands in it, head twisted towards the unmoving chest: pinned to lifelessness by the splintering wooden stake wedged in the center of his chest.


	2. Skeletons in the Closet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: Blood, Self-Inflicted Injury (not in an angst context), Mentions of (false) Non/Dubcon.  
> ((please let me know asap if I've forgotten anything!))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and all the nice comments! Chapter 3 is complete, but since it is very long, I am trying to shave it down a little, so please be patient! :^) 
> 
> \- Kiwi 🥝

Three things are certain to Jisung right now:  
1\. His pajamas are ruined   
2\. The lock is going to be _super_ expensive to fix   
3\. There is a dead guy on his floor.

This isn’t the way this was supposed to happen. Jisung was meant to take over the pawn shop and create some type of pawn shop capitalist empire. He was going to change the course of his life. In all fairness, technically his life is changed forever - but more in the _trauma_ way and less in the _millionaire_ way, which isn’t ideal. 

Felix and a stranger with dark hair are frantically shaking the body, talking some nonsense to Jisung which he can’t focus on - he’s staring at a dead body and they’re expecting him to be able to process anything that they’re saying right now? Eventually, his brain kicks in, after he finds himself staring at the bloodied mess of the man’s chest. 

“What happened?” Jisung asks, a little foggy-headed.

Felix, whose eyes are ringed red, chokes back a cry and tries to explain, but his words come out broken, he chokes between Korean, English, and some other foreign tongue that Jisung can’t quite catch. Helplessly, Jisung looks at the other boy, serious and significantly calmer. 

“Our friend was stabbed in the chest,” He says. 

Well, no _shit Sherlock._

“Okay - and why the fuck did you bring him here? I’m not a doctor! I don’t - I can’t help!” Jisung argues, absolutely flabbergasted and beyond reasonable level-headedness. 

“You have what we need.” 

“He needs an ambulance!” Jisung argues. He feels for a pulse, his hands coming from the floor tacky with blood. He leaves behind a smudge of blood across deathly-pale skin when he gives up. The man is pale beyond hope of life, lips blue and eyes empty and unfocused. “He - an ambulance-” Jisung deliriously gets up and finds himself in front of the telephone. 

“I- no! We need - help us, Jisung!” Felix’s deep cry sounds out. The boy is on his feet, running around the store, _hopping_ over his dead friend to navigate the space. Jisung can hardly believe his eyes, only less so when the other boy begins grabbing bits and pieces from Jisung’s shelves. 

“What are you doing?! Are you seriously robbing me right now?” Jisung calls indignantly. 

“We’re _helping_ him - we need you to get out the charged paint-” Jisung cuts Felix off.

“Well I’m helping him by calling a god-damn ambulance!” The Jesus picture falls off the wall again - seriously, read the room, dude. 

Jisung dials the emergency services, wincing at the time it takes for the rotary to return to base, only to be greeted with an angry, booming voice when he picks the phone up to his ear.

“Are you completely dense or just ignorant?! Go help Felix and Changbin or so help me God I will haunt you for the rest of your miserable little life.” 

The violence of the voice sends him staggering back, the phone bangs against the wall as it swings limply on its cord. He can’t call an ambulance. There’s a dead guy on his floor - he’s going to get arrested. He was murdered and Jisung is an accomplice now, he has blood on his hands. 

Jisung wipes his hands, tacky with a grotesque mix of blood and sweat on his pajama pants. His knees shake under him. The body, a broad, young-looking man lies still amongst the flurry of movement from Felix and Changbin, who seem to find no issue in stepping over him to rummage through his shelves. Felix is shouting directions at Changbin, who is grumbling angrily about the rearrangement of the stock. 

It reminds Jisung, somewhere in the back of his mind, of the ocean. When a whale dies, it floats lifelessly in the sea, hauntingly alone in the endless murky waters. Then, suddenly, a school of fish smells its lifelessness, and in a flurry of fins and scales, devours the poor thing. 

“Yah - you! Get the goddamn paint!” Changbin shouts. His voice like garbled gravel, rough and coarse and filled to the brim with threat. Jisung doesn’t even have a choice to not comply. The man is short - but he’s as broad as he is long and Jisung suspects he could break Jisung’s spine over his knee if he was so inclined. 

Jisung trembles as he gets the paint. Then a collection of powders. Then a handful of floral things. Then a lighter - _this_ wasn’t a stock item, but Jisung needed something to light the prayer candles with, just in case the little old lady brings _another_ skull in. Jisung dumps all the errands by Felix’s feet. 

Felix frantically counts through it all, mumbling in strange tongues. Jisung stands there uselessly watching the boy. This is so different from the Felix he had encountered before - no more glittering gems or pretty makeup, no fluffy hair, none of the strange aura of enticement. Eyes rimmed red from tears, pale face, splotchy in places with redness, hair in as much disarray as Jisung’s - the boy looks like he himself had been pulled from his bed. 

The cheery disposition is nowhere to be seen as he seriously moves bundles of flora together, then rocks, then seems to mumble to himself in disagreement, and rearranges the things again.

“Hey-” The voice calls out, still gravely and rough, but with less bark to it, “Help me move this, will you?” 

The display table is weighed down with huge decorative lamps and busts and all sorts of heavy-metalled things. Jisung is about to tell Changbin there’s no way they can move this without taking the shit off first, but with a push - the table is easily pushed out of the way and into one of the aisles. 

“Thanks for your help,” Changbin smiles. Jisung looks at his hands, he had hardly even touched the table before it was moving underneath him. Changbin didn’t need his help at all, just trying to get him either out of his own head or out of Felix’s way - for whatever the fuck he was doing. 

Changbin shifted the body into the center of the floor, now there was decent space around him. He even pulled the shitty rug from under him and tossed it over his shoulder, where it hit the door with a wet sound and left a trail of blood on the glass as it flopped uselessly to the ground. 

Changbin is already busying himself, taking the black paint, dipping his hands in it, and painting all over Jisung’s floor. Not that the floor was particularly _nice_ or anything - but it wasn’t in a poor enough state to need a haphazard touch-up. In a low squat, Changbin quickly paints a circle around Chan, and then begins, with quick fingers, to paint what seems to be some type of strange archaic language. It looks somewhat familiar. 

Felix dances around Changbin, dropping lit candles in seemingly random places on the floor, then where each hard line cutting out from the circle meets in a point, Felix takes a crystal, rubs it between his hand, and cups it towards his face. He seems to mutter something strange, then puts it down with the ease of handling a wounded animal. 

The ball drops.

And boy, does it _fucking_ drop.

“This is a sacrifice,” Jisung is so sure. So sure. He’s seen it before on movies, the weird drawings, the candles, the _dead body_ \- these guys killed the guy and they’re gonna sacrifice him right in front of Jisung’s eyes! Unless - “You’re gonna kill me next!” 

The silence is long, but not heavy. Changbin pauses his drawings, Felix is holding a lit lighter an inch away from the wick of a candle. They pause, look at each other, then at Jisung. 

“So when you said he had no idea…” Changbin says after a long silence, completely ignoring Jisung now.

“I really meant he has _no idea._ ” 

Changbin seems to think about something, then shakes his head, “No - we don’t have time right now. You-” Jisung jumps, “We need bandages and a sewing kit.” 

“I don’t have a-” 

“Auntie has a charged sewing kit in the left hand side of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I can’t sense it - but she usually keeps normal bandages nearby.” Felix shoots him a look when Jisung doesn’t shift, and it’s all he needs to follow the orders. 

Jisung, for some fucking reason, follows the orders that are given to him. He hands Felix strange rocks, he helps Changbin move some candles, he tapes his blankets and sheets over the windows, he does everything Changbin and Felix tell him to, as if his head isn’t next on the chopping block. 

Although, they don’t seem worried about him in the slightest. Felix is growing more and more frazzled by the minute, rubbing the crystals frantically between his hands again and whispering to them more. He tosses a strange pinkish powder into the candles, seemingly dissatisfied with the results. 

“...Felix?” Changbin asks, expectantly looking between the candles and the body in the middle of the entire arrangement.

“I’m trying!” He snaps, then immediately falls back, apology wrung on his face. “I- I don’t know what’s wrong. The normal charging isn’t working - it should, it’s worked before on that old fanger on the hill… and _you._ ” 

Changbin expertly covers the anxiety on his face. “What could be stopping it?” 

Felix gnaws at his lip. He looks around, as if something is in front of him, waving a clue in his face - but there isn’t. The boy begins examining the body - its pulse, behind its eyelids, running small hands down its torso and down its legs. He’s checking for other wounds, Jisung guesses. 

“The stake is normal, right?” Changbin offers.

Felix reaches a careful hand to it, then nods. “It’s not charged, not engraved, nothing. A branch fresh from a tree has more charge in it than this old thing.” He sounds miserable. The earlier hustle and bustle is slowly fading from him. “I’ve tried all the tricks to make the circle stronger, everything in the book - but I feel nothing, Changbin. We’re barking up the wrong tree entirely...” 

Changbin has nothing to offer. Nor does Jisung - because what the fuck is going on? But whatever it is, they seem upset and Jisung doesn’t want to either upset them further or incentivise them to kill him next. 

Robotically, Felix’s arm rises to the stake, taking a firm hold on the hulk of the wood. Changbin watches him with wary, wide eyes, and brings his hands out in front of him like approaching a dangerous wild animal. “Felix - leave the stake alone. We still have time, okay? We can figure something out-”

“No we can’t. I’m not strong enough for any more advanced spells even if I knew them. I’ve - I’ve tried, and I’ve failed, Changbin. I-” Felix’s grip turns white on the wood. “We need to appoint a new clan leader- and I don’t-” Felix squints his eyes shut and takes a stuttered breath. “Chan, I’m sorry - I’m so sorry-” Felix’s wrist works, twisting the stake. Blood pools out of the wound with the movement. Felix’s bicep flexes in preparation to tug-

Jisung runs to answer the ringing phone. 

When had he put it back on the receiver? 

He wasn’t sure who he was hoping to be on the other line - maybe Seungmin, maybe the police - but either way, he got what he had kind of expected. 

“If Felix touches that stake I will end his life,” The spector’s voice grinds.

Jisung blinks at the phone. 

“TELL HIM THAT.” The voice is loud enough to carry when Jisung pulls it from his ear, so he holds it in Felix’s direction, now paused. “Felix - get off Chan. Now. Or so help me god, I will take that stake and pin you to the wall by your guts.” Changbin pulls Felix back. Despite his evident worry, Changbin soothingly pets the wayward strays of Felix’s hair. The voice on the receiver sighs.

“You know how nocturnals get so horny over bite virgins? It isn’t without good reason. Bagged blood is fine, but once it’s cold it loses its properties. When a human is eaten from, the toxins that nocturnals secrete from their fangs to lull them into safety stay in the body. It doesn’t damage the blood or the human, but it nullifies some of the properties that fresh blood has - healing, energising, even rumoured to be magical. Why do you think so many black magic spells and charms require virgin blood?” 

Felix listens carefully, eyes glued to the body feet away from him. 

“Chan hasn’t drank from you before, right?” Changbin nudges. But Felix shakes his head, still deep in thought.

“My magic is too strong, I would make him sick…” 

“Jeongin?” 

“Maybe, but he’s too far away. I don’t even know if Chan is -” Felix takes a breath. “I think we’re too late.” 

“There’s a virgin right in front of you. Take him and find out-” Jisung slams the receiver down. As expected, two sets of dark eyes are on him, looking him up and down. Jisung still doesn’t have a clue what is going on, but it sure feels like he just got sold for ransom. He can’t help but back away when Felix rises, nor can he help the way his heart is beginning to race.

“Jisung-” Felix’s voice is soft, but tight. This is time sensitive, Jisung isn’t entirely sure why or what is going on, but the desperation in Felix’s eyes makes him pause for a moment. He knows there’s something way outside his breath of reality happening - it’s been happening all along. “Can we use your blood?”

“I- what?” Jisung’s eyes ask the question, torn to the body on the floor. Changbin answers the unspoken question.

“He’s a vampire. He’s been - someone has tried to kill him,” He says a little uselessly. Jisung looks to the very clearly dead body on the floor, now beginning to go fully blue. 

“ _Tried?_ Uh, no offence but-” 

“A lot of supernaturals go into hibernation when our life is at risk. Our body shuts down to try and prolong even the smallest chance of life,” Changbin explains. “Felix has revived people closer to the brink of death than this before.” Felix shivered at the memory - apparently not a hugely pleasant one. 

“Please-” Felix takes Jisung’s hand into his own and holds it to his chest. “You’re Chan’s only hope. He’s our friend - we wouldn’t be here without him.” 

Jisung sees Changbin swallow heavily at that and look away to take a steeled breath. 

“Will I still be… normal?” Jisung suspects he said something wrong there, with the way Felix’s eye twitches, but Felix says nothing. 

“Yes. You’ll be human - maybe a little tired, that’s all.” 

Jisung thinks heavily. This is exactly what he didn’t want to get involved in. In fact, this is way _more_ than what he expected. He thought there was some sort of illegal blood trade, like warehouse-surgery kind of deals. But no - apparently this little pawn shop is the transport office for the town’s apparent vampire population? 

He didn’t want to get involved with the bad crowd - is _this_ the bad crowd? They’re not human - the body on the floor, Felix’s talk of charge and power and all that jargon. Even Changbin seems a little strange - a little _too_ ashy-faced, eyes a little _too_ glazed-over. 

Then he considers the way Changbin is holding his breath, hands clenched in anticipation. How Felix is gently squeezing the feeling out of his hand, on the edge of his seat waiting for Jisung’s answer. Jisung doesn’t know about the supernaturals, or about vampires. But he _does_ know that he doesn’t want to be the reason that someone loses their friend.

“Okay,” He says. “But if I die I’m gonna be pissed.” He tries to make it sound like a joke, but it comes out flat. 

Jisung finds himself on his hands and knees, leaning awkwardly with his neck over Chan’s mouth. His name is Chan - he knows this because Felix _insisted_ in introducing them even though Chan is possibly actually dead. Felix is holding Chan’s mouth open - his warm, honey-toned fingers a horrible contrast to the greying, vein-threaded skin. 

“This is going to hurt a little,” Changbin says. A reassuring thing to hear from the guy holding a box cutter into the flesh of Jisung’s neck. “Once he tastes the blood, it should kick him into consciousness.” 

Felix takes his spare hand and squeezes Jisung’s. It is a welcome comfort and Jisung doesn’t feel the tiniest bit ashamed when he threads their fingers together and squeezes as hard as he can. Felix’s voice is low and soothing, a nice contrast to Changbin’s rough warnings.

“Chan has been hungry this week - Seungmin lets him feed, but it isn’t enough. Not to mention his body will be craving energy to heal-”

“All of that … on top of my blood being like cocaine?” Felix sends Changbin a concerned look, but fixes into one of reassurance to ease Jisung. It doesn’t.

“We’ll be here in case anything happens-” 

Changbin cuts Felix off with a grunt. “He’ll probably go into a feeding frenzy. It will probably scare you and he might manhandle you a little - don’t freak out and don’t fight it. Once he bites, he’ll release venom which will relax you - probably will knock you out, given your size.” 

Jisung lets out an indigent ‘hey!’, which despite the situation, makes Changbin laugh. It’s a lot - but he trusts the two. He probably shouldn’t - but the fact that Seungmin is their friend helps for some reason. He can’t imagine someone like Seungmin getting involved in any nefarious business. Jisung takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready- _OW FUCK!”_

Changbin takes a nick of his neck before Jisung even finishes his sentence - before he can argue, Changbin has a hand on the cap of his skull and another on his chin, carefully adjusting Jisung so that the droplets of blood will fall into the vampire’s open mouth. 

Multiple things happen over the next few seconds. 

The blood lands on the vampire’s tongue. His body jumps into action, chest suddenly heaving with floods of oxygen, the pupils contract and they blink from glassy brown to a strange, effervescent coated orange - reminiscent of a cat's eyes in the dark. Changbin releases Jisung’s neck quickly and jumps out of the way, Felix following quickly suit when fangs plunge from the gums and a rumbling, dangerous growl is directed their way. The vampire takes Jisung by the hair and brings him down, wrapping strong legs around his waist. Jisung tries not to tremble, not even _breathe_ as the vampire licks at the wound, growling low in his ear. 

The blinding pain hits him first. 

Jisung can’t even scream - all he can do is try and get his diaphragm to wake up from where it constricted violently from the pain. It’s red-hot, burning pain. Jisung swears the teeth went straight through his neck to the otherside - horrible barbed things. 

The sensation of his blood being drained is almost as bad as the pain, every survival instinct in his body is fighting for Jisung to move. Instinctively, he tries to pull away - earning another low growl and a harsher bite. 

Jisung could cry in relief when numbness spreads. The venom finally kicking into his system. His neck cools down, it creeps up his jaw, rendering his speech useless. His arms and legs give in next, and it’s all he can do but flop around lifelessly as the vampire, without dislodging his teeth, flips him onto his back and crawls over him, making wet, sloppy sounds as he feasts on his neck. 

It’s almost soothing, having his energy being drained like this. Like when you’re slipping away to sleep and can _feel_ yourself doing so, feeling the muscles loosen and relax. The heaviness of your eyelids pulling them closed, the feeling of the warm darkness licking at the corners of your consciousness… the... slowing down of time….the…. the…. the….

The last thing Jisung hears before he falls into unconsciousness is Changbin and Felix’s voices, somewhere miles away, and the feeling of a struggle happening somewhere above him. 

  
  


.

..

…

….

…..

……

“They broke in, I don’t know how-”

“Because the wards weren’t up to date. That’s how. They weren’t charged and you _know_ how important it is to charge them, especially around this time of the month.” 

Jisung slowly rocks himself into the land of the conscious. Geez - his neck hurts like _fuck._ Not just his neck - everywhere. His head is thumping, his body feels sluggish and heavy. Make note: never get bit by a vampire again. At least the guy lived - he guesses. Unless he tore apart Jisung’s neck then kicked it - which seems like a waste of blood and Jisung’s hard working white blood cells to try and patch what feels like the mariana trench in his neck. 

The voices pull him from his slumber, harsh stage whispers that are growing in volume as the argument draws on - and there is a familiar, silky voice, albeit more nasal and irate than Jisung had heard before. 

“Seungmin, calm down-”

“Calm down? Why, am I yelling? 

“Changbin… please,” Felix’s voice is tight. “Minnie, we didn’t have any smoked quartz so-”

“Then you tell me and I _get some_ \- Jesus Christ, what is it you think my role is in the group, huh?” 

“You don’t have a role, Seungmin - you’re our friend, not a-”

“You know what I mean. If you need anything you tell me and I get it for you. Look what happened, Felix.” 

“Leave Felix alone! He isn’t the only one responsible for the wards around the house,” Changbin’s voice cuts harshly through the stage whispers, rising into normal volume, shouting in comparison to the tone that Jisung had woke up to. Not to mention it makes his headache ring. 

“No, he’s not. If Jeongin and Hyunjin were here I’d be riding their asses too - hell, if _Chan_ was awake I’d be shaking him for being so reckless and braindead. All of you are responsible.” There is bite in Suengmin’s voice that Jisung hadn’t expected to hear. From somewhere near him, he hears Felix’s deep cooing.

“I’m sorry…” Jisung risks a peek. He’s only a little surprised to find that he’s lying on his bed, head on pillow. He’s more surprised to see that he’s top-tailing with Chan, of whose head is currently being cradled and patted by a mournful scrap of a boy. Felix continues his murmuring, until he’s cut off by Seungmin, who sounds a little more composed.

“I’m not trying to yell, or place blame. I’m sorry. I’m not angry or disappointed - I’m _worried._ Jeongin called me to fill me in while I was on shift - I had to stand there, scanning groceries for _two hours_ until my shift finished. Thank God I was only on a half shift - I wouldn’t have been able to leave until the daytime. I couldn’t ask to leave - if anyone there knew anything about what happened…”

“You’d be at risk too,” Changbin supplied.

“Exactly. It was the longest two hours of my life. I was worried - not just about Chan. This type of complacency is exactly what got Minho killed.” 

Jisung tries not to shit his pants right there.

“Why am I always dragged into things,” A voice complained. Jisung, from his position of peeking between his eyelashes fails to pinpoint him. He has to be cautious when looking around, because Changbin is sitting right beside him, elbows propped on his knees.

“Minho, I’m sorry-” Felix begins, only to be cut off.

“You weren’t even _born_ back then. This is why we don’t bring my death up, Seungmin,” The ghost presumably gestures to a now crying Felix. Who is very much denying that he is crying while wiping his tears onto his sleeve. 

Jisung almost falls off the bed when he suddenly feels someone - Changbin - _sniffing_ him. “Meatbag is awake,” He announces. 

“Don’t call him that,” Seungmin says tersely. He gives Jisung a half-hearted wave. Jisung returns it, but pulls his hand away when Changbin sniffs that too. 

“He smells a _lot_ better than you do, Minnie,” Changbin says. Jisung really doesn’t like the way Changbin is eyeing up his fingers. He closes his hand into a fist and tries to edge away from Changbin without seeming too blatantly obvious. 

Seungmin hits Changbin’s arm. “That’s because I wear anti-undead lotion after the last time you tried to eat me.” 

Changbin pouts and curls into himself, hands between his legs looking like a toddler and not like some type of zombie-cannibal at all. “It’s not _my_ fault you always smelled so delicious.” 

“Is he gonna eat me?” Jisung splutters stupidly, looking pleadingly at Seungmin.

“No.” “Maybe.” They both say at the same time. Seungmin hits Changbin again. 

“Stop scaring him.” 

Jisung sits up at last, eyeing Changbin carefully. Changbin licks his lips and lunges at Jisung, and almost falls to the floor laughing at the scale of Jisung’s flinch. This guy sucks, Jisung decides. Felix is carefully dislodging Chan’s head from his lap, substituting it for one of Jisung’s pillows. He excuses himself to go wash his face and Jisung doesn’t miss the worry in the other three’s eyes as they follow him out the door. 

“He blames himself,” Minho says tightly. He had been hovering somewhere behind Felix the entire time. Now, he scoots closer to Chan and reaches out as if to touch him. He doesn’t. He does take a side glance at Seungmin, who meets his look tenfold.

“I didn’t mean for it to go that way.” 

“You need to be careful with him,” Minho makes to say something else, then realises their added company and rephrases his words. “You know why.” 

Seungmin tries not to glare, he really does. “I’m well aware of that, _Minho._ ” 

The tension in the room proved to be too much for Changbin, who stands up, his small frame seeming suffocatingly large. “I think Felix can speak for himself. He isn’t a child,” he bites. 

“Of course _you_ would say that,” Minho says, none too kindly. “It was probably one of your old _friends_ who did this in the first place.”

Changbin squares up, arms folded and shoulders flat. “Excuse me?” 

“What? Have you got maggots in your ears?” Jisung’s eyes flit between the two like a tennis match. Supernatural brawls are definitely not covered in his building’s insurance. 

“After everything I’ve done for this group - seriously, Minho? You’re not the only one who’s fucking worried about Chan - we _all_ are. So why don’t you get down off your woe-is-me horse and stop taking your bitterness out on us.” 

Jisung could kiss Felix when he interrupts the argument, a mere second before it looks like it’s about to get really nasty. As much as Jisung loves a good cat-fight, it’s liable that Minho could possess him just to get a punch in at Changbin - and looking at those muscles, Jisung’s tiny body wouldn’t stand a chance. 

“Hey - Minho-hyung!” Felix calls out excitedly before opening the bedroom door. He looks considerably fresher, and none-the-wiser about the dilemma currently unfolding in the bedroom. He cranks the door open, points out into the living space, where Jisung’s little skeleton buddy is staring them down from its space in the corner. “It looks like Auntie found some more of your ribs! You’re only missing your head and your left foot now!” 

Jisung’s head spins at the chorus of excited chatter. Even Changbin, who looked ready to strangle the ghost not seconds ago was breaking into a smile and congratulating Minho. Minho himself looked pleased, albeit there was nervousness under the surface. Seungmin regards the skeleton and looks at Minho with one of his bright smiles - but even that luminescent grin of his couldn’t pull Jisung out of this brain gap.

“M-Minho?” Jisung asks, looking between the ghost and the _fake_ skeleton. The Science class diorama. “What do you mean Minho?” 

Minho floats over to Jisung, a smirk growing on his face at Jisung’s discomfort. Felix and Changbin hold in laughter, only nulled by Seungmin’s piercing glare. 

“Have fun explaining this one, Minnie! My form is about to be exhausted… so I unfortunately can’t stick around to see if he pees his pants.” 

“I’m not gonna pee my pants!” 

“We’ll see…” Seungmin says, displeased at Minho’s antics. He reaches for Changbin, who tries to bite him. “Stop that- you _know_ I taste terrible with this lotion on, stop it.” Changbin backs off, only to be engulfed in Felix, who jumps on his back, smile breaking in two with a smile. 

“I can feel Chan’s energy,” He announces. “I think he’s gonna be fine - and it’s all thanks to Jisung.” 

Jisung plays with his fingers when the attention turns to him. He whistles a tune nonchalantly - he wants this to be _over._

“I guess that’s our cue to leave then, right?” Minho checks with Seungmin who nods.   
“Go back to the house. I’ll stay here with Chan until he’s awake. We don’t know if the people who did this will try it again, so it’s better for all of you to stick together. When he’s strong enough, I’ll bring Chan home in my pocket-” 

“As a bat-” Minho interjects for Jisung’s sake - although he looks weirdly smug while doing it.

“So you’re not spending the night at the house?” Felix asks, frowning over Changbin’s shoulder. Seungmin shakes his head.

“It’s too dangerous. I need to keep a low profile as much as possible. It’s too risky if anyone sees me at the house. I’ll stay at my apartment for the next couple of days, I think I have the key for the place somewhere - if you need anything call me and I’ll get it to you as discreetly as I can. No, Felix - I don’t think it’s a good idea for any of you to go out in the daylight for a while.” 

Felix lowers his hand, clearly about to suggest that he could run errands, like he had one time in the store. 

“Hey, guys…” Jisung peeps. All eyes turn to him. “What did you mean by ‘Minho’?” Jisung regards the skeleton again. The other chitter with laughter, but Seungmin looks different. He looks… sad. 

“I’ll explain it to you, Jisung. Let’s get all of these hooligans out of your apartment first.” The speed that Seungmin is able to usher everyone out of his apartment is impressive. Changbin is still carrying Felix, whose eyes seem to be closing with exhaustion. He waves to Jisung happily, thanking him for his help. 

“And you two can pay me for the time it’s going to take to clean up the mess you left downstairs because god knows that Jisung doesn’t know how to get vampire blood out of hardwood flooring!” Seungmin shouts after them. The footsteps hasten downstairs and the pair giggle out the door. Jisung notes that Minho is gone. Seungmin confirms that Minho is either going to follow them home to oversee their warding, or clean up, or what ever the fuck they have to do. 

Today has been a _day._

Seungmin has his hands pressed flat on the door, head hanging below his shoulders. Today mustn't be any easier for him, either.

“So…” Jisung starts, Seungmin’s pose tightens. “What about some instant noodles?” 

Seungmin looks at him disbelievingly. In the middle of such a traumatic and life-changing series of events, what else was Jisung going to do? Lighting a cigarette would probably be more appropriate, but he doesn’t smoke - his only vice is spicy chicken instant noodles and if that’s how he copes than that’s his own business. 

Seungmin only falls into light laughter. He nods and comes towards the bed - Jisung wonders exactly why Seungmin is coming over to him until he tries to stand up and his legs promptly crumble beneath him. Seungmin catches him, although Jisung grapples at him desperately, scared that a fall will knock him out again. His consciousness is still somewhat hazy at best. 

Seungmin deposits Jisung onto his couch and lets Jisung direct him around his small kitchen until eight delicious minutes later, Seungmin is sitting politely on the edge of his couch, Jisung sprawled on the other side. 

“So,” Seungmin starts, putting his uneaten instant noodles on the coffee table and folding his hands together. “I think you’re owed a bit of an explanation…” He sighs. “I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning,” Jisung says through a mouthful of stress-noodles.

Seungmin gives him a flat look, “Well,” He says with a fake smile, “Chan was born in 1843.” 

Jisung chokes on his noodles. He thumps his chest. “Maybe not the _very_ beginning then. Can you start with… what everyone...is?” Jisung asks carefully. Is that an appropriate question? Or did Jisung just commit a gross act of speciesism. Wait - are vampires different species or is it more like dogs, same species different breed? 

Seungmin seems to sense his apprehension and gives him a calming smile. “Well, you’ll be glad to know that I’m a temp - human, I mean. Sorry, they call me that so often sometimes it slips out.” 

“A temp? Is that why Felix and Minho called me that?”

Seungmin frowns. “They did?” Jisung nods. Seungmin clicks his tongue. “I thought they had more manners… it’s not a derogatory term, but it’s not a polite one. It’s short for ‘temporary’ because our lifespans are so short. Not like Felix’s is much longer.” He rolls his eyes, but a smile passes his lips anyway. 

Jisung rolls his wrist to encourage Seungmin to continue.

“Chan is our leader. Supernaturals form packs, it’s a safety thing ever since humans started hunting them centuries ago. Although normally species stick together… the supernaturals don’t trust each other any more around here. There was a scandal from a vampire clan that resided here for hundreds of years. One of the vampires turned against their clan - which is unheard of - and exposed their clan’s supernatural status to the townsfolk. Some were killed, some fled. The other species grew distrustful amongst themselves, and overtime clans and groups broke up.”

“Was Chan one of them?” Jisung asks. He’s old enough, apparently. 

Seungmin stills and gives him a stiff nod. “He was only a fledgling. He fled but he came back some centuries later… for some reason. One-by-one, all of us kind of… fell into his lap. We became a group so slowly we didn’t even notice.

“Felix and Jeongin are both witches, although Felix is older and stronger. The gap isn’t big - only about ten years, but Felix… had to adapt quickly to his powers.”

“What does that mean? Like Hogwarts?” Seungmin shakes his head.

“It’s not my story to tell.” Jisung suspects it’s not a particularly happy story. “You haven’t met Jeongin yet. Or Hyunjin, right?” Jisung shakes his head. “Hyunjin is a fae, so be careful not to listen to a single thing that comes out of his mouth. He showed up one day with an adopted Hellhound - Kkami. God knows why - the thing hates his guts.” 

Jisung snaps his fingers and jumps excitedly - “Yes!! The sexy one? I saw him in an alleyway!” 

Seungmin snorts. “A fleeting romantic encounter in a dirty alleyway? Suits you.” 

Jisung gives him the finger and chews on another mouthful of noodles, “Keef ‘oing.” 

Seungmin screws his nose, but complies. “Changbin used to work with the hunting guild. They pose as farmers some ten miles away, but in reality they hunt and sell to supers. They drain animal blood for especially poor vampires who can’t afford the hospital-grade human blood I deliver. Raw meat to the werepeople, things like that. Until one day, I guess the townspeople caught wind of their under-the-table business, and they were threatened to either stop or have their farm burned to the ground. Changbin, however, kept visiting. He was the youngest hunter and was always tasked with the deliveries, so we became close with him - especially Felix.” Seungmin rolled his eyes affectionately. “He snuck out in the dead of night to visit Felix every couple of days. The guild were paranoid that we were corrupting Changbin, using him to be our pawn and infiltrate them from the inside out or some fucking bullshit.” Seungmin took a calming breath. 

“You can skip, if it’s too much-” 

“No. It’s fine.” Seungmin takes a breath. “They wanted to send us a message, or to ward us away from their group. Their method of doing that was apparently to shoot Changbin six times in the stomach and dump his dying body on our front door.” The noodle pot crinkles under his grip. “Obviously, Felix and Jeongin were able to somewhat bring him back. I don’t know much of their black magic - nor do I want to. Chan was mad at them because magic like that is frowned upon, but to be honest, we were all so happy that Changbin was alive that we ignored it.” 

“I-” Suddenly, Jisung’s noodles didn’t look too appetizing. “Is that why he keeps threatening to eat me?”

Seungmin hums. “Side effect of reanimation. It was a gamble, there’s a lot of side effects but thankfully Changbin’s are all manageable. He has a craving for human meat - but he seems perfectly content with animal meat. Most of the time…” He mutters, but before Jisung can ask him to _please_ clarify what he means by that - Seungmin puts his untouched noodles on the coffee tables and motions for Jisung to wait there as he disappears into the bathroom.

Seungmin comes back with a damp face towel and with gentle hands, starts cleaning Jisung’s neck, jaw, collarbones… all of it. “I didn’t realise how messy I was - no one told me before.” Jisung mumbles. The cloth is stained rusted red from the dried blood. 

“We’re used to it, the others probably didn’t even register. We see Changbin with a bloodied face more than we see him clean.” Seungmin apologises when he goes over the bite, a sharp and deep pain thrumming through Jisung’s body. “Sorry. The pain gets easier to manage the more you do it. I hardly flinch now when Chan feeds on me...although,” Seungmin wipes a little more to get a better view, “Chan has never eaten from me with… such enthusiasm. You might need stitches…” Seungmin hums unhappily.

“Is it that bad?” Jisung asks, going to feel his neck, but Seungmin’s hands push him away.

“Germs,” He scolds. “I think you’ll be fine. It’s stopped bleeding but I can’t guarantee it won’t leave a nasty scar.” 

“Do you have any?” 

Seungmin responds by pulling the collar of his shirt down, revealing two perfect, pretty little fang marks, a little swollen and red but albeit perfectly neat. He can see some gentle white scarring of the same manner around the area - but if he hadn’t been looking for it he wouldn’t see it. 

“Next time he can use a sippy cup - _not_ that there’s going to be a next time. There won’t.” Jisung is _adamant_ not to go through that again. Seungmin doesn’t seem to find fault in that. 

Seungmin continues cleaning the area, treating Jisung with more gentleness than Jisung has ever felt in his life. 

“I have a question,” Jisung asks. Seungmin sits back on his hunkers, nodding seriously. Jisung only had to raise his eyebrows to the skeleton. Seungmin pulls a face, as if he doesn’t want to be the one to tell him. Although the displeasure of doing the talking doesn’t seem to make him beat around the bush. Seungmin walks right through the bush, tramples it and stomps it into a mess of twigs.

“That’s Minho’s skeleton - well, most of it.” 

Right. Yeah. Sure - of course it is! Why wouldn’t it be?   
Jisung flops his back onto the seat of the couch and groans into his hand. “So you’re telling me I _slow danced_ with Minho’s skeleton on my first night here?!” The embarrassment floods him quicker than the unease. 

“And you didn’t even take him to dinner first!” Seungmin only laughs at his expense. Jisung continues to groan petulantly. 

To be honest, Seungmin cleaning the dried blood from his body had lightened his mood a little. He hadn’t realised how sticky and gross he’d been feeling. He grabs the abandoned noodles and goes to town again.

“You’re taking this very well,” Seungmin says apprehensively.

“Do you want me to take it badly?”

“Take it however you want to take it.”

“Well how did you take it?” 

“I found half of Minho’s torso stuffed in the freezer of an abandoned house when I was eight years old,” Seungmin says without skipping a beat. 

“You -” Jisung drops noodles from his chopsticks onto his pants. He pays no heed. “ _What.”_

Seungmin shrugs, as if this is the least interesting thing in the world and definitely not traumatising in the slightest. “I used to explore the area a lot when I was a kid,” Seungmin explains, “There was this old, derelict house in the middle of the forest that my friends were too chicken to go into, so I went in on my own. I was rummaging through the place, looking for a souvenir to prove to my friends that I actually went in. So I see this freezer, one of the big standing ones, and I open it and-” Seungmin chokes a little on his words, although he tries to cover it. Jisung reaches over to comfortingly pat his thigh. Seungmin accepts it graciously. “There was his… torso. Or what was left of it. It was a pile of bones and a horrible, disgusting liquid sludge. I’m fine,” He reassures, “But the smell is something you don’t forget.” 

“I bet - especially when Changbin smells so terrible,” Jisung jokes. He makes Seungmin laugh and his chest explodes with pride.

“Chan heard me screaming from his house, and he came to me. He was so composed… I don’t know how…considering that he probably new it was Minho... but anyway - he took me to Auntie’s and sat me on the same couch we’re sitting on now and told me everything.” 

“So when you said earlier about Minho being killed…” Jisung whistled low. That’s heavy shit for a kid. “How old was he?” 

“He doesn’t remember really. He says he was 23, but Chan argues he was two years older. He was born in 1960,” Jisung’s eyes widen. Everyone here is so old… “He and Chan were dating, this was after Chan returned to the town. They tried to keep it hidden, but secrets don’t last long here. The townspeople eventually figured out that they were dating and as you can see, it didn’t turn out well for them.” Seungmin gestures to the skeleton.

Jisung really doesn’t want this thing as a decoration in his living room anymore, no offense, Minho. Plus: the vampire and the ghost are dating?! No wonder Minho was in such a shitty mood earlier. To watch someone you care for possibly pass away right in front of you with the inability to do anything? Jisung couldn’t stand the thought. But it leads him to wonder...

“Wait - because of the gay thing or the vampire thing?”

Seungmin looks at Jisung as if he’s stupid. He just might be. “Take a guess.”

“So they’re fine with the gay thing…” Jisung ponders.

“Why are you so focused on the gay thing and less on the murder thing?” Seungmin presses, eyebrows furrowed. 

Jisung crosses his arms. “Well _excuse me_ for being worried about being murdered!” 

Seungmin’s eyes widen momentarily and he subtly tries to hide a smile. “Oh, you’re also - right.” He coughs. “Well you won’t be for that. But if they find out you’re a ‘fangbanger’ then they will.” Seungmin’s nose crunches at his own use of the offensive terminology. “Which is why,” Seungmin moves close, breath wafting over Jisung’s cheeks, and punctuates with a finger in his chest, “You don’t know. Anything. About. The. Supernaturals.” 

Seungmin is so close their noses are almost touching. Seungmin is cross-eyed and Jisung is sure he is too. “What should I say if I want to talk about a supernatural, then?” He asks breathlessly.

“They use the term ‘friends’ or ‘family’ to refer to each other.” 

“Okay,” Jisung breathes. “Seungmin?” 

“What?” 

Jisung points to the occupied threshold of his bedroom door. “I don’t mean to alarm you but there’s a friend looking at us _right_ now.”

Chan’s face is sluggish and tired, and a murder scene of blood both from Jisung and himself. Clearly he’s hardly fit to stand on his own two feet yet, but here he is, leaning against the door frame and trying to collect his thoughts enough to grab Seungmin’s attention. Seungmin wastes no time in hopping over the back of the couch and leading Chan back to the bed. Jisung hops up and follows suit. 

“I don’t think I even need to tell you how _stupid_ you are, hyung,” Seungmin scolds. The scolding tone with the use of honorifics makes Jisung feel fond for some reason. Despite being some hundreds of years Seungmin’s senior, the vampire just nods.

“I’m sorry, I know.” His voice is hoarse - probably from all the growling he did earlier. Chan pulls Seungmin into a weak hug and mumbles into his neck. It isn’t clear enough for Jisung to hear, but Seungmin pushes him back down with weak complaints. 

“The others are back at the house, clearing up and warding the place. Don’t even think about trying to do any damage control until you’re better. You were on the very brink of death, Chan. None of us were sure you were even going to make it. If it wasn’t for Jisung here you’d be dead.” 

“Minho would lead the clan, and he would do a better job,” Chan grumbles, sounding on the verge of tears.

For all his empathy, Seungmin slaps the vampire around the skull. “A _human ghost_ can’t lead a clan.” 

Chan grumbles, and with Seungmin’s help, faces Jisung. His face is still worryingly pale, but it has a pink flush - no longer grey and decaying. His face is a horrible mess of dried blood - _Jisung’s_ blood is matted in his hair. Jisung tries not to feel faint at the thought. 

The vampire smiles weakly. “Jisung, thank you. You shouldn’t have been dragged into this and I can only apologise. But you’ll be granted our protection for life in repayment for your sacrifice.” 

Jisung isn’t sure if he means his blood or the blanket Chan had drooled blood all over. Before Jisung can ask, Chan’s eyes are rolling back into his head and he’s swaying dangerously in Seungmin’s arms.

“Chan, can you change your form so I can bring you home?” Seungmin says with haste.

Less than five minutes later, Jisung is alone, having watched Seungmin’s retreating figure on his little bicycle with an adorable bat tucked carefully into the collar of his sweater, his head poking out and sleeping comfortably. Seungmin made a hasty promise to explain things more thoroughly when he can. As well as to help clean the shop.

He grabs Seungmin’s hand as he leaves, a part of him begging him to stay. In this horrible whirlwind, Seungmin had been the one constant. A calm, soothing drug in the fast-paced kaleidoscope of bullshit that was being thrown his way. Seungmin always offered a hand, a kind smile, or even the briefest of explanations whenever he needed them the most, and he never makes him feel stupid for asking them.

He’s a little mournful to see Seungmin’s figure retreat - especially knowing that he’s alone in an apartment with a real human skeleton and a killer on the loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, imagining a little bat Chan tucked into Seungmin's jumper... please I'm crying. 
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this chapter!! I'd love to know what you all think ~~~ 
> 
> Hope to talk to you in the comments! (i have no social media for skz, so I have no where else to talk besides the comments of my fics LMAO)
> 
> thank you for reading <3  
> \- Kiwi 🥝


	3. At the Dinner Table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire fic was meant to be 30k. bye. literally hate myself. 
> 
> **Chapter Warnings**  
> BRIEF Mentions of underage sex (fabricated) - BRIEF Mentions of non-con (fabricated) -  
> (if i missed anything let me know!)

Jisung almost tackles Seungmin to the ground when he sees him some days later. Jisung had forgone the whole ‘cleaning’ things and decided to dump paint over the blood, claim it was an accidental spillage and haphazardly cover it with a rug. Seungmin comes loaded with a list of things - some which have names that Jisung hasn’t even _heard_ of before. 

He’d expected Seungmin to be around sooner, the day after even - but no. Jisung was fretting around his shop and apartment for almost a full _week_ before Seungmin came back. And the only reason he knew he was coming because it is blood day - and sure enough his phone rang cheerily at the ass-crack of dawn with Seungmin asking him for a stock count of human blood bags. Just the normal, nuclear Sunday morning. 

“Give me your number.” 

Seungmin whirlwinds his arms to stop himself falling over. Jisung pulls him straight and follows him as he shops around, dutifully following the list. “That’s a little forward.” Seungmin focuses more on complaining about Jisung’s rearranging than him - which is downright offensive considering that Jisung has not slept in what feels like a hundred days. 

“I gave you mine but you never texted,” He says, a huge pout on his face. Seungmin entertains him with a quirk of the lip and feigning innocence. 

“Was I supposed to?” 

Jisung eyes the empty shop nervously. “For my questions about… you know - the _thing._ ” 

“The gay thing?” Seungmin says cheerily like an asshole.

“No! Well -” Jisung trips over his feet as Seungmin turns his attention to him fully - cheeks fat with a grin. “Shit, maybe. No - you know what I mean.” 

Seungmin folds his arms, the tote bag full of stuff slides down his shoulder where he continuously pushes it back up. “You don’t know about the gay thing? Did you move out to _find yourself?”_ Seungmin decorates with his hands, long fingers wiggling deliriously at Jisung. He can only stare at them in a completely normal way. “Most people move to Seoul for that, not away from it.” 

Jisung hands Seungmin an item he’d pointed at on the list, none too happy about the accusations. “I am perfect adapt at the gay thing, Seungmin! In fact, most people say I’m pretty _good_ at the gay thing!” The till makes loud tapping noises under his fingers while he rings Seungmin up. 

Seungmin raises an eyebrow from where he’s counting his money. “I hope you treat your partners better than you treat that old thing.” The punching stops in lieu of a pout. 

“Don’t pretend like you’re not turning green at the thought of being that till, Seungmin,” A echoey voice calls out. Jisung only jumps a little and he really doesn't like the fact that he’s growing complacent with the collection of spookeys scuttling around his place. Seungmin’s face flushes and he quickly gathers his things in an adorable panic. 

“Wait - green in sickness or-” Jisung’s own face starts to go red. Minho phases through a shelf with a look of disgust. 

“Sometimes I wish my soul _would_ just pass into the afterlife.” 

“Maybe if you didn’t drink so much of Chan’s blood in your life then you’d be human enough for Saint Peter to let you in,” Seungmin grumbles. Minho’s glare is icy.

“Oh fuck off,” He says, although it’s cold and rigid, there’s no anger in his eyes, nor does his posture show any type of defensiveness. He’s floating around as nimble and as cool as ever. “I hope you get chopped up and scattered around too.” 

“Oh no-” Jisung interjects, “I am _not_ having two skeletons in my living room. Absolutely not.” Jisung crosses his arms. “Seungmin if you die you can rot in the ground like a normal person.” 

“Hey!” Minho cries indignantly, although it goes ignored. 

Minho continues poking and prodding the two, clearly hoping for something interesting to be said, but nothing does. Although, Jisung couldn’t lie - he isn’t completely opposed to flirting with Seungmin. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome but Seungmin’s easy presence and huge, face-splitting smile is a ray of dazzling light in the mess of Jisung’s life - and he would quite like to see it up close. He thinks he might like to taste it, too - but the thought it too much to bear right now, so he forces his brain to focus on perfectly safe things to focus on.

How Seungmin’s chestnut hair reflects the fluorescent light. How he sucks his lip into his mouth when he’s concentrating on counting the change - making sure that Jisung gave him the right change. Jisung can’t bring himself to be offended. The way Seungmin’s honey-voice asks Jisung to help him strap the cooler onto the back of his bike. How good his ass looks as he comes off the seat to pump the pedals- 

Reel it back Jisung. Reel it back. 

Despite it all, Seungmin’s presence relaxed Jisung a little. The boy tends to have that effect. The thoughts of supernaturals and the town being plagued in blood and murder weighs little on his head for the afternoon. 

That isn’t to say that he doesn’t have a lot to think about, because he does. He wonders how much of the fantasy fictions are rooted in reality - is Twilight a god’s honest glimpse into the world of the supernatural or is it a gross and blatant misrepresentation? Jisung doesn’t think Edward ever got staked in the heart - but he can’t say that his Twilight trivia is as up to par as it might have been ten years ago. 

Jisung has a lifetime of vampire and general supernatural lore tucked into the crevices of his brain from his many dabblings in horror movies and cheesy video games. There is no way that they don’t hold some weight in truth whether it be intentional or not - but it’s a delicate balancing act because how much of it is so blatantly untrue that it is either laughable or straight up offensive. It’s something he should probably ask Seungmin about. He’s _sure_ that Chan is lovely and kind and all these other things that his friends seem to think - but the only real interaction that Jisung has had with him was the vampire trying to maul his neck to pieces with hunger. 

Speaking of his neck - it’s healing quicker than he’d expected. There’s probably some vampire voodoo magic happening there, but since he doesn’t have Seungmin’s number - he can’t _ask._ Maybe if he talks to the skeleton, Minho will appear? Well - if he didn’t appear when Jisung was dancing with it in his barefeet around the kitchen then it’s doubtful that Jisung has any summoning powers when it comes to the ghost. 

That being said, the ghost sure does have an affinity to pop up at all the most annoying and inconvenient times. He knows that Minho lives at the house - wherever that is, so it’s only safe to assume that he follows the others around town every now and again, keeping himself hidden to save his energy. 

And witches? Felix’s enchantingly pretty face and engaging demeanor pops into his mind. He wonders if the other witch - Jeongin, he thinks he’s called - has the same alluring effect, or if it’s just Felix being _that_ pretty. It’s not like Jisung is attracted to him or anything, but there’s something alluring about the boy. It reminds him of the strange mind-fuzz that the fell victim to with the ‘fae’ - Hyunjin, was it? Jisung presses his hands into his eyes at the stress of all the new information. 

Jisung thinks about Changbin for a brief moment before deciding he definitely doesn’t have the mental capacity nor emotional disposability to think about the whole ‘zombie’ thing - wait, shit - is zombie an offensive term? 

Jisung pulls his phone out and jots the question into his notes app which is growing considerably with questions to ask Seungmin, growing less and less comprehensible as they grow. 

  * _How come felix can’t make minho undead like changbin?_


  * Is witch more like crystals and nature or cauldrons and potions or like in harry potter??? 


  * What other supernatural things are real??? ((BIGFOOT??))


  * Opinion on twilight?? 


  * ZOMBIE SLUR? 



He thinks about the growing list of questions about this new, wonderful, fucked-up world he’s been dragged into as he fumbles around the shop in a half-dreamlike state. He’s pretty sure he rang some old man’s rosehip oil at ½ the price it was listed but he really can’t bring himself to care in the slightest. 

He has the usual collection of customers, some browsing at some of the weird black candles that had been delivered to his backdoor in the morning, some generic decorative pieces being sold - nothing that was shocking enough to draw Jisung out of his brain.

That was until the bell rang violently, the door swung open with enough force to send a breeze the to the register, where Jisung was standing playing a game on his phone.

The greeting dies in his throat.

The stranger’s footfalls are heavy. Huge, stomping boots marching towards him in a way which can only feel like trouble, even if the face of the man is drawn into a smile, it feels threatening - something behind his eyes that makes Jisung’s stomach flip with unease. 

Jisung can’t help but stand uselessly when the man approaches the till. He didn’t even pretend to browse, to look anywhere around the shop before making a beeline towards Jisung. He leans arrogantly on his elbow, posture a leaning tree. Meanwhile, some invisible force has straightened Jisung’s back with a metal pole. He manages a weak smile, although he feels how fake it looks on his face, so he lets it fall again when it’s responded to with silence. 

The man sucks his teeth, raking Jisung up and down with his eyes. “So you’re the new kid, huh?” 

“Yes sir,” Jisung replies politely, however the tone doesn’t reflect the choice of words in the slightest.

“You know, it’s considered good nature to introduce yourself to the notable authorities in a small town. Having an outsider move in without so much of an extension of a hand is awfully off-putting to some,” His eyes bore into Jisung, “Down-right rude to others.” 

“I’m from Seoul, I wasn’t aware of the moving-in customs here. I’m sorry if I caused any offence,” Jisung smiles tightly. He isn’t really sorry, not in the slightest because … really? It’s the 21st century, not some small village from the 1700’s where no one leaves and no one comes. Although… Jisung does get the vibe that visitors are few and far between, new residents even moreso. The man stares at him calculatingly, then he throws his head back and laughs. It’s loud and booming in the stillness of the shop. It goes on a little too long. Jisung can’t take his eyes off the veins popping from the man’s temple.

“I suppose we can give the city boy a pass,” His voice swings back to low and serious with such a dizzying speed that Jisung wonders if he imagined the whole laughing thing. “My wife seems to be under the impression that you’re a good, honest kid who understands the importance of keeping traditions.” 

The sharp eyes and smile that never reaches the eyes tells Jisung more about who his wife is than words ever could. 

“In fact,” The man drags his ragged nail up and down the grooves of the counter. “She found a real gem here last week. A real one-of-a-kind, you know - I’m sure you do. She’s been a loyal customer here for decades, and not once had she seen such a prized item on the shelves, despite the demand for such things. Your Aunt always claimed to tread along the line of impartiality-” His face contorts in disgust. “But that never really works out, does it, Jisung? There’s no such thing as true impartiality because at some point… someone is going to make the move to grab you by the arm, by the sleeve, and _tug_ you into their pasture and fill your brain with twisted and sick notions.” Jisung’s muscles clench under the man’s grip. His hand encircles his entire bicep, and yet, he can’t move - can’t take his eyes off the sharp gaze. 

“My wife has a lot of faith that you will follow the right path. The path of upholding the safety and dignity of the town and its people. What do you think?” The grip tightens. Jisung’s mouth is heavy with cotton, the heat of the man’s penetrating gaze sucking all the moisture from Jisung’s mouth.

“I- I-” Jisung starts pathetically. “I’m trying to do that, yes.” 

The man lets go of Jisung, only to put both his hands on the counter top, fingertips turning white with the pressure and force put behind the action as the man leans forward. “See, that’s what I thought too, Jisung. I decided to make a visit this morning before church, and I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I see a delivery of strange and suspicious supplies being dropped at your _back_ door at the wee hours of the morning from an unmarked van. No invoices, no dockets, no paper trail… seems suspicious, no?” The smile slithers onto his face and lingers there, sharp and threatening. 

“I can show you all of the inventory that was delivered this morning, I have it all on display,” Jisung knows his eyes are huge, terrified and squirrelly. He can’t help it - every single alarm in Jisung’s body was blaring: _DANGER DANGER DANGER._

The man doesn’t even bother to look over his shoulder at where Jisung’s head is nodding at. He retreats a little from Jisung’s space, but not enough for Jisung to catch a breath. 

“I’m sure we won’t have to worry about you becoming a fangbanger, right, Jisung?” Jisung swallows thickly and shakes his head. “In that case… you’d be happy to tell me what the Kim boy had strapped to the back of his bike when he should have been at Church? It must have been dreadfully important, given how fast the little fanggang’s whore was going.” 

“Don’t call him that.” Jisung could’ve shit himself when the words came out of his mouth. He didn’t think about them - his thoughts obliterated his brain-mouth barrier to defend Seungmin, and he’d do it again no matter how cold the look he receives is. It’s hidden behind a fake smile and Jisung doesn’t give the man the pleasure of returning it.

“Ah, you’re right. Maybe I am too harsh on the boy, he is a victim, afterall,” The man sighs and relaxes, something like pity painting his face. It’s an ugly look on him. His eyes trail lazily around the back shelf, although Jisung can tell he isn’t actually looking at any of his products. 

“How do you mean?” Jisung asks the question the man was waiting for him to ask.

“Ah, of course, you mustn’t know…” The man turns the words over in his mouth, thinking greatly about the terrible venom about to slip casually from his mouth. “Well, little Seungmin got quite a fright while playing in the woods one day. All on his own. It’s no place for a child so young to play on his own, but kids will be kids, you know? That thing - _Bang Chan,_ an adult - started hanging out with the boy in secret after the incident. Now, isn’t it a little strange for an adult to spend so much time with a child? So obviously, I was concerned.” 

Jisung could puke at the fakeness of the concern in his voice.

“But the fanger must have trained him well… coerced him into lying to us, to saying that that freak was his _friend_. I can’t even imagine the torment… the pain that child has been through. Things like that mess with your brain, you know? It’s not a surprise he’s been so easy to succumb to the rest of the group… God knows what horrors they put him through now…” 

“I’m not sure what you’re implying.” Jisung says through gritted teeth. He can’t even bring himself to fake politeness. The accusations came so abruptly, so easily that Jisung knows it’s a rehearsed script, coming far too easy and fluidly to have been made up _just_ for him. 

The man’s grin is punchable. “Oh, I’m sure you do. And that’s the sad realities of these horrible freaks that stain our society. Which is why you’re going to be good, right Jisung?”

Jisung feels his face muscles trying to bring his face into a snarl - he fights against it as much as he can but he is sure his face is twisted into disgust when he speaks lowly, no tremors or prior nervousness present now - all he can see is red. “I would like you to leave.” 

The man sucks his tongue and shrugs dismissively, as if to say ‘whatever you say, kid’, but the meaty slap of the desk as he raises himself to leave is a heavy message in and of itself. Only more when the man looks around the shop with a glint in his eye before he pulls the door open, says his goodbyes and vanishes from Jisung’s eyeline.

Jisung locks the door, switches the neon sign to _Closed_ and barricades himself in his bedroom, waiting with the taste of salt on his upper lip for Seungmin to come back to drop the cooler off. _Praying_ that Seungmin makes it back safe and in one piece. 

\--------

The home of the clan was nothing like Jisung had imagined. Some gothic mansion on a hilltop, or a creepy cobweb-coated cottage, or a suspicious cabin in the woods, maybe even some type of cave. None of these suspicions turned out to be true. In fact, the home was more unassuming than the shop Jisung himself lives in. 

It was a little off the beaten track, Seungmin’s bicycle making calculated swerves around tree roots that had grown since the pavement had been laid, nature claiming her stake on the earth and punching the roots through the man-made floor of grey with her colours of brown and green. Seungmin took a turn down a road which Jisung would have assumed lead to nowhere, a tiny little entrance which looked like nothing more than a pedestrian road, the long journey bracketed with bushes and huge, overarching trees. Jisung held tight onto Seungmin the entire way, hands pressing uncomfortably into his ribs, Seungmin making little ‘oofs’ whenever the bicycle wheel hit something which jostled Jisung, squeezing Seungmin tighter. 

Against Jisung’s belief, they passed houses on their way down the beaten path. Seungmin would ring his bell everytime he would pass a break in the trees or a moss-covered gate. The greenery so dense, so wild, that Jisung could only manage the occasional glimpse at the homes. He saw manicured gardens amongst the jungle; rows of tulips and roses and an entire entourage of flora that Jisung doesn’t know; a botanical-style greenhouse, with huge panes of glass and beautiful ornate decorations on its roof. Another house, gated off with a white picket fence which was greening and splintering around the edges, an ordinary-looking brick house with a puffing chimney and a tyre-swing tied to the towering oak tree in its front garden. 

Seungmin rings his bell to tell the residents that it’s only him - since he’s the only human that geers down these parts and some of the supers can smell him, getting nervous or hostile at the presence of unwanted humans. Unwanted and _dangerous_. Their fears were only fair, apparently. The bell also alerts them that Seungmin is coming home - allowing them to draft up any errands that might need doing. Sometimes it’s picking little bits and bobs from Jisung’s store, sometimes buying whole animal carcasses from the butcher’s to satisfy the wereperson in the house with the adorably painted pink door. 

If Jisung wasn’t so terrified about the turbulence of Seungmin’s rally racing bicycle ride, he might have actually enjoyed the journey. The world seemed to slow down along the narrow road, encapsulated by mother nature. Further down the road, they passed a row of abandoned buildings, reclaimed by ivy and trees, mother nature taking back what humans had erected in her soil. It wasn’t creepy like derelict buildings tend to be - it looked… loved. Despite the presence of reclaiming nature, there was presence of life: bowls of freshwater being used by some skittish birds; carefully groomed wildflowers; panes of glass removed cleanly from windows, allowing the branches of the trees to grow through without obstruction.

Here, mother nature was the boss, and the people worked by her side. 

This could have been a busy area of town, perhaps the area that the supers once populated until the siege happened. Until the supers were forced into hiding or fleeing. Now, unpopulated, decaying houses live the rest of their lives, outnumbering the weak number of occupied spaces with their smoking chimneys and windows cranked open and their wind chimes twinkling somewhere in the breeze. 

Seungmin pulls up beside one of the gated homes, pulls a silver key from his pocket and ushers Jisung in, walking his bike up to the little stand beside the porch. Unceremoniously, Jisung finds himself on the grounds of a supernatural clan, gate locked behind him - too tall to climb over and too new to break through. 

The home is… perfectly standard. A two-story with a wrap-around porch with a small garden, a tool shed to the side of the house, and in the background, a decent distance away, a withered barn. It looks exactly what one would expect a farmhouse to look like. A little dated, maybe, but not without care. The windows lined with fresh white paint, the sliding a cheerful (albeit a little weathered) blue, front door painted in its matching hue. Even the windows look new, sitting heavily in the windows, like they’d been upgraded to double-glazing. 

Careful ivy licks up the side of the house, painting a good portion of the roof a healthy green. The sharp snippets indicate that it’s carefully pruned, growing away from the windows. Even the lawn, where the dirt trail from the gate to the porch cuts it in two, is well-kept. An image of Chan mowing the lawn in the dead of night pops into his head. 

He suspects that after the trauma of the whole dead-vampire business that his survival instincts have been spun into overdrive, because even with the delightful image of nighttime lawn care in his brain, his heart is speeding out of control. The silver key dangles mockingly from Seungmin’s back pocket, where it’s just peeking over the seam. The windchimes in the distance sound an awful lot like grating laughter. 

_Look at the silly boy. Little Hansel walked right into the witch’s home. He’ll be gobbled up anytime now!_

Even the little marker drawings of vegetables sticking from the garden on cardboard-topped popsicle sticks do nothing to ease the churning of his stomach. The sense of dread he feels now is even worse than the dread he felt with the man in his store earlier today. The same man that Seungmin’s face grew pale at the mention of. 

Seungmin had returned to the store later that afternoon to drop off the cooler. Jisung ran out of breath multiple times in his rush to tell Seungmin _everything_ . He even wrote down notes on his phone so he wouldn’t forget any detail. He didn’t need to, though. As soon as he go to the part where Seungmin’s name was mentioned, the other boy didn’t need to hear any more. He started closing the shutters of the store (since when did the store have _shutters_ \- that would have been useful to know before Felix and Changbin burst through his front door), pulled Jisung onto the carrier of his backwheel, told him to keep his arms and legs inside the vehicle, and dragged poor Jisung into something that he called safety.

Safety feels like anything _but_ the word to describe the place right now. 

Like there’s something _evil_ about the soil that Jisung is standing on. Vibrations from mother earth telling him to leave, scram, haul ass. 

Seungmin catches his panic, and quickly seems to realise exactly what’s going on, apologising profusely. “I’m sorry - it’ll only feel that way for a moment. Jeongin and Felix have warded the property against humans. The dread is strong enough to keep them away. You’re safe here, the feeling is just the warding.” Seungmins assurances do little to ease the aching in his stomach, but he believes him, and despite his nerves sizzling on his skin and exploding when Seungmin guides him up the porch and into the threshold of the home, he pliantly lets it happen. 

The interior is much as Jisung had expected. Aged woods, a mismatch of furniture and decorations collected over the decades, among them are crystals and figurines and all sorts of vials and bottles with liquids and dusts. As his panic rises, almost crippling his movements with the anxiety, he hardly regards that there’s more shit in the home than in his own shop. 

Seungmin leads him down the hallway, past the stairs, Jisung squeezes his eyes shut when he’s led into the kitchen - the sight before him enough to make him feel faint. Seungmin supports the extra weight when his legs wobble. Seungmin manhandles him into a seat at the breakfast table, pulling it out and swiveling it around with his foot, all the while chiding Changbin.

“Eat your food in the barn, Changbin, how many times do we have to tell you?” Seungmin’s voice is laced with bite, although his hands are gentle when he positions Jisung away from the mess. 

Changbin wipes blood from his mouth, spreading more blood over his face. “Chan gets to feed in the god-damn sitting room and I’m banished to the barn like a dog?” Changbin wraps the hunk of raw meat in the paper parcel it came in, smearing blood over the outside of the paper. Blood stains his face, neck, shirt - it’s like a massacre over the kitchen sink. Bloodied handprints line the edge of the white porcelain. 

“Chan’s a vampire - they’re clean eaters. Not a single _drop_ of blood goes to waste - you could feed Chan for a week from what you wring out of your shirt!” Seungmin tugs at the ruined white tee. Changbin at least starts to clean a little, taking a rag and wiping the blood down. 

“How was I supposed to know you were gonna bring weak-guts over for a visit?” Changbin nodded at Jisung. Jisung waved weakly in response. “When you said you were going to bring home take-out, this isn’t what I had in mind, but it certainly is a treat…” Changbin takes a step forward, eyes glinting darkly. 

This time, Jisung’s anxiety kicks his muscles into action, and he flinches back and shoots off the chair - restrained by a pair of arms forcing him back into his seat. “He’s under the ward-” Seungmin explains - it’s a short explanation, which is cut off with Changbin’s face jumping to one of shock.

“Oh shit - I’m sorry.” He apologises sincerely. “Jeongin is at work right now, but I think Felix is with Chan right now, I’ll go get him.” 

Seungmin stops him at the door. “Jeongin is at work?” 

The confusion on Changbin’s face is clear. “Yes? It’s Sunday, he always works the afternoon at the movie theatre on the weekends. Why? What happened?” Changbin’s tone changes as Seungmin’s face gives way to his worries. Changbin steps into Seungmin’s space in the response of silence. “Seungmin. What happened? Why did you bring Jisung here?” 

Seungmin pushes Changbin back, careful to avoid the blood on his clothes. “Please call Jeongin and tell him to try and come home as soon as he can without raising suspicion. If he can’t, we’ll have to accompany him home.” 

“But…” Changbin swallows. “But Jeongin is the least suspicious here. No one has even seen Jeongin around any of us, he works with the sheriff’s son and we all know how quick they are to sniff out the supers.” Changbin spits. Seungmin hears this, and fishes his phone out of his pocket, all but throwing it into Changbin’s sticky red hands. 

“Call him now. Tell him to come home, straight away. Family emergency, sickness, housefire - anything he can think of. He needs to come home now. I’ll explain everything, but when we’re all together, it’ll be easier to discuss then. Now please go get Felix before Jisung starts bouncing off the walls.” 

Changbin looks at Jisung, shaking and trembling uncontrollably in his seat. He isn’t even scared of anything in particular, but the feeling of anxiety is only getting stronger. It’s taking everything in his power to not claw his own skin off of his body. Seungmin kneels in front of him as Changbin’s heavy footsteps echo down the hallway, raising up the stairs. Jisung can feel the vibrations of the heavy footsteps above his head in his veins; the knuckles rapping on a door thrumming in his skull; the low rumbling between Changbin’s gravel-tones and Felix’s deep bass shifting the air around him. 

“Felix will only be a moment, I swear. Do you want me to stay here, or will you be okay if I clear up after Changbin,” Seungmin glares at the mess of blood and shreds of raw meat around the sink, “As usual.” 

Jisung takes a deep breath. He’s dealt with anxiety before - stomach somersaulting for no reason, body on high-alert with no visible threat in the middle of the night. Only this time - there is a reason, one which Felix will be fixing shortly. Jisung shakes his head, “I’m fine.”

Felix’s featherlight footsteps alert Jisung all too late of his presence when the boy drags a chair from the table to sit adjacent to Jisung. He works quickly and wordlessly, not even greeting Jisung or responding to Seungmin’s question; “How’s Chan doing?” 

Instead, he focuses on Jisung, checking his eyes, his pulse, then doing something weird where he closes Jisung’s eyes and holds his skull in his hand. Jisung lets Felix manhandle him. Felix, with deft and steady fingers, pulls a small vial of black ink from the arm full of stuff he had dumped on the kitchen table. With a ornate and ancient-looking brush, he dips the ink, wiping the excess on the rim of the jar, then rolls Jisung’s sleeve up - only to be stopped by Seungmin.

“Is that the staining or washable ink?”

“Staining.”

Seungmin wipes his hands on a clean rag and pushes Jisung’s coat off his shoulders. “We need to do it somewhere out of view, then. Jisung,” He turns to the boy in question, “Can Felix paint the ward-exceptions on your back? That way no one will be able to see it. It’s safer.” Jisung nods and shakely takes off his layers. He turns himself in the seat and is quick to hug the back of the chair as Felix starts painting over his back.

“The staining ink might burn a little while it sets into the skin. Human skin isn’t really used to charms like this, so it will try and reject it,” Felix explains professionally as he paints ancient symbols into his skin. Sure enough, the ink leaves an uncomfortable, tight pain where it touches. Jisung grunts as Felix strokes over a knob of his spine, the nerves crying out in sensitivity. 

Seungmin is folding his clothes, setting them on the table. Then straightening them. Then re-folding them. Rinse and repeat. Seungmin seems to be doing little more than distracting himself from the view in front of him. Jisung normally would _jump_ at the opportunity to poke fun at Seungmin at avoiding Jisung’s naked upper body - but Jisung senses it’s less to do with Jisung’s god-like physique and more to do with his sharp breaths of pain and the way his face scrunches up in pain every now and again. Even moreso, the worry that grew on his face about the ‘Jeongin’ guy never really shifted. Jisung suspected that it wouldn’t shift until the guy came home safe and sound - much like how Jisung had been waiting nervously for Seungmin to return after his deliveries this morning. 

Eventually, the sound of the glass jar clinking on the table [pre something] Felix’s warning. “This will hurt.” And it _did._ Jisung’s nails left indents in the paint of the chair, showing the sand-coloured wood beneath the white paint. Seungmin almost mirrors the look of pain on Jisung’s face for lack of being able to do anything to help.

Eventually, Felix’s hand lifts off his back and a stranger’s shirt is carefully pulled over his head. Felix fixes his hair as Jisung tugs the t-shirt on. “It’s one of Chan’s,” Felix explains, “It’ll be loose enough not to irritate your skin. Do you feel better now?” Felix is moving to catch Jisung’s face worried that maybe his writings hadn’t worked, but the relief on Jisung’s face seemed to tell its own truth. Felix pushes his chair back in and begins washing the ornate paintbrush under the kitchen tap. 

“I’m sorry,” Felix suddenly gasps, “I didn’t even say hello! Oh my god, my manners are being scrubbed away living in this place. Are you here to ask more questions? Did Minnie not have time to get into all the dirty little secrets of our clan?” Felix grinned, but it faded as Seungmin and Jisung shared a look. “What? Oh no, Seungmin what happened?” His voice drops to the deep tone when he gets serious. It doesn’t match his face at all, Jisung thinks. 

Seungmin folds Jisung’s coat for a fourth time. He gives Jisung consideration, as if he was holding his tongue around him. “How’s Chan? Will he be fit for dinner?” 

Felix squeezed the hairs of the brush, black running along his fingers, the porcelain becoming stained once more by the dirty water. “I don’t think he’s hungry after his virgin buffet,” Felix shoots Jisung a grin. The phrase makes Jisung cringe.

“Don’t call me that...I know you mean blood-virgin but it’s embarrassing…” Felix only laughs. 

“Why?” Felix turns back to Seungmin, a little less stress on his shoulders. “Do you want him to join us for dinner?”

“Yes. Everyone.” 

“Even Changbin?” Felix asks, growing back into concern although playfulness tugs on his lips.

Seungmin looks at his nails, where Jisung can see dried blood within the grooves. “Yes. But he can either eat _cooked_ meat or starve.” 

Felix pulls a face, then says something about cooked rabbit, his attention turning back to cleaning his paintbrush. Jisung takes a breath, just to feel how easy his lungs are able to inflate and deflate without the wards sending his brian into overdrive. The adrenaline is soaking through the souls of his feet, and to be honest, he feels a little exhausted after the entire scenario. 

The pawn shop was a bad decision. This is what his brain is telling him. His life's in danger, he can feel it. But… even stronger yet: something's telling him that this was a _great_ decision. The part of him that’s still seventeen and impulsive and _stupid_ \- the part of him which had been buried under adult things like mortgages and utility bills and pension plans and health insurance. No more skateboarding down steps to see how far he could go - because now, he has to pay for it. No more collecting sneakers just for the hell of it - now he has groceries to buy. No more staying up until 4am playing computer games - now he gets up at 7am to go to his standard office job. So when an opportunity comes along to turn his life into a twisted game of Mafia - sure, _why the fuck not?_

The supernatural-things being real is an interesting development at least, even moreso that they’re not actually the bad guys. Although Jisung still gets a throbbing ache in his neck when he turns it too far to the left - that’s neither here nor there. 

And amongst all the crazy, the undead eating raw meat over the kitchen sink, the witch painting spells on his back, the fae and his hellhound, the vampire who has been to hell and back, and a witch who works part time breaking up horny teenagers in the darkness of a theatre, amongst all of it: is Seungmin. Perfectly human. A delivery boy to the occult. 

Changbin enters the room, opening the refrigerator and talking animatedly to Felix about something or other. Probably the wellness of their clan leader. Minho floats through the ceiling, obnoxiously waving his hand in front of Felix’s face to distract him from his brushes. Felix and Changbin start whipping each other with towelettes, dancing around Seungmin like he was hardly in their way. Seungmin carefully reunites Felix’s paintbrush with its pot, and rifles through the cupboards.

Three minutes and a whining Changbin holding his crab-red arm later, a cup of coffee is set in front of Jisung, Seungmin settling into the seat opposite him, his own cup in his hands. A perfectly normal cup of coffee - Jisung could burst into tears.

“Did you put sugar in this?” Jisung asks, the bitter stinging his tongue. 

“No.”

“Can you put sugar in it?” 

Seungmin turns to Changbin, still whining over the smallest flush of red Jisung had ever seen, claiming abuse on Felix’s part with the deadly towelette. “Changbin, tell me something: do I look like a butler? A servant?” 

“You’re too rude to be any of those things,” Changbin replies. Seungmin shoots Jisung an I-told-you-so look. The benevolent Felix passes Jisung the bowl of sugar. “Jeongin is on his way home. He isn’t too happy about losing out on his wages, though.” 

Seungmin cards a hand through his hair, then rights it back into place. “I’m not happy about it either. I’m down on deliveries ever since the masquerade the other night.” 

“It’s alright. Me and Jeongin can fast for a week or two if needs be. We’ve been eating well for so long, our energies won’t deplete dangerously.” Felix notes the surprise and concern on Jisung’s face. Felix was a slip of a thing - much like Jisung himself, there is no way that he would come out of a two week fast anything more than dead. “Witches don’t need to eat as often as you do. Although it makes us stronger if we do. A strong witch can go a month without food.”

“We need you and Jeongin to have as much energy as possible.” Seungmin says. “I’ll explain when everyone’s here. It’s a clan discussion.” The statement is enough to immediately quash the egging on Felix and Changbin’s lips.

“Will we have enough for a double order of blood bags?” Felix asks as though he’s reluctant to do so. Seungmin gives him a concerned look, but gets up and opens a jar from atop the highest shelf in one of the cabinets. There, he looks into it and back up dissatisfied, taking hardly anytime at all to count the bills stuffed there.

“Why does he need a double order?” 

Seungmin repeats the question when Felix falls silent. 

Changbin squeezes Felix’s hand, and whispers something into his ear. Jisung looks away, feeling very much like he’s intruding. “He’s healing slower than we expected,” Felix whispers this, looking up to the ceiling in case Minho pops his head down to eavesdrop, although Jisung has a sneaking suspicion that he can hear everything anyway. 

“But he’s getting better?” Seungmin presses, panic in his eyes. Jisung is looking much the same. “He can feed more from me, he knows that. He only feeds once a week from me, I can easily go thrice a week if he needs it.”

“You know his pride won’t allow it.” Changbin huffs at Felix’s words - clearly a topic of contention between the clan.

“He almost _died_ and he’s worried about old politics?” Seungmin’s knuckles grow white where he grips the cup. Felix leans over and touches his hand to remind him to loosen before he shatters the handle. “I always tell him I _willingly_ donate my blood when he needs it because he’s my friend - it’s not like he’s using me as a bloodbag.” 

“Vampire politics are complicated when it comes to humans, believe me. ” A voice peeps in from overhead. A quadrant of necks crane upwards to catch Minho descending from the ceiling. “I told him Jisung was here. He wants to see him.” 

The mouthful of coffee suddenly turned into cement. It went down his throat as smoothly as a spoonful of sand. The leader wants to see him. This shouldn’t be as nerve-wrecking as it is, I mean, the guy had bled out on Jisung’s bed, ravished his neck six ways from Sunday and then almost passed out mid-conversation. But that was in Jisung’s domain. This was different - this place was warded against humans, for god’s sake! Jisung is an intruder amongst them, and he feels as such when all eyes fall to him, wide and trying to hide their concern.

“Alone?” Felix asks, head shooting from Minho to Jisung. Minho nods.

Jisung looks to the others for reassurance as he silently pushes his almost-full coffee away from him and follows Minho out of the kitchen. He rather wishes he hadn’t, with the eyes staring back at him like they were watching Jisung on a kamikaze run. 

He jogs a little to catch up with the spector, who glides along the floor without checking to see if Jisung is following him. The stairs are steep, and Jisung is surprisingly out of breath at the end of them. Minho regards him curiously. 

The hallway is much the same as the rest of the house: cluttered with decorations and other dated timepieces. A long hallway bracketed by old doors with heavy black doorknobs, lightswitches in the colour to match. On the other side of a stairway, the chipped hardwood flooring abruptly stops to a cleaner, smoother finish. The walls are smoother, the panelling fresher and paint brighter. 

“This is the new expansion. When Hyunjin and Jeongin joined we realised we were running out of bedspace. Plus, one bathroom between the entire clan was going to cause a beheading.” Minho explained when he notices Jisung toeing the place where the two tones of wood join.

“How come you didn’t put down new floors the entire way?” 

“Chan thinks it adds character.” Minho rolls his eyes, although there’s considerable softness there. “Chan’s room is the old side, which is a pity because Jeongin’s room has some really nice plaster work on the inside.” 

Jisung looks to the door Minho’s pointing at - at the very end of the hall. Makes sense that the leader has the room at the very end, mirroring how a King eats at the head of the table. More anxiety is growing in his stomach. 

“Why is your face that way? He doesn’t bite.” Minho says with a sharp smile. Jisung pulls a face and covers the healing wound on his neck. The spector puts a hand on his shoulder - well not _on -_ but it hovers there a little. Goosebumps break out over his body. “He’s been moping around all week because he never got the opportunity to apologise or thank you properly. He also feels bad because he thinks he should have been the one to explain everything rather than leaving it for Seungmin,” Minho explains. He sighs dramatically, as if this entire situation is a pain for him. “All this fretting over you - I _told_ him you’d bounce back and he didn’t believe me.” 

Jisung can’t match the heat of Minho's eyes, so he fiddles with the tag poking out from the borrowed t-shirt he’s wearing. “He did apologise-”

“And then almost passed out straight afterwards. Vampire politics are a headache, please, I can’t handle his blueness anymore. If I wasn’t already dead I’d kill myself.” 

Jisung thinks Minho is a little dramatic, but who is he to argue? It's not like he can just say ‘ _Actually, I’d rather not. Thank you for letting me into your house O’ gracious Vampire Lord, but I would rather not talk to you.’_

He has no real reason for the fear in his chest, he knows that Seungmin wouldn’t lead him into danger, that the open honesty of Felix and the brutal honesty of Changbin and Minho would not lead him into a fraudulent net of safety. He’s seen the Vampire on his deathbed and thereafter rising from it, droopy-eyed and weak, but yet, the mess of his neck throbs. His shoulders ache where the Vampire had held him down. The smell of blood still haunts his shop, his apartment, his skin. Briefly, the manic eyes flash in his head, and he knows that if he doesn’t force himself to go in now, then he’ll likely run with his tail between his legs. 

So he does. 

And the sight he’s greeted with is so absurdly mundane that it makes him break into laughter. Chan, wearing a huge black hoodie, sleep mask forgotten on his forehead, sitting up in his bed with a macbook balanced on his lap, and a mug of something hot and steaming cupped in his pale hands. 

The man startles and pulls out his airpods - oh my god he’s wearing _airpods._

Jisung tries to right himself, he really does - but the image is such a contrast to the archaic broody coffin and candles setting he was expecting that it throws him through an entire mental journey to adapt to the mundanity of it all. 

Chan laughs awkwardly, not quite understanding what’s so funny, and closes his laptop. “Uh.. Hello again, Jisung!” He smiles, confusion clear on his face. 

“Hi! Sorry - I just wasn’t expecting-” 

Chan waits for him to continue, although he makes a noise of understanding when Jisung gestures around the room. “Ah, you were probably expecting a different get-up, right? Sorry to disappoint, we’re a lot more boring than the media makes us out to be. Talk about having to try to live up to unrealistic expectations.”

“Like a coffin?” Jisung settles his giggles.

Chan groans, “Nobody in their right mind would sleep in a coffin. Why would vampires? We like comfort just as much as anyone else.” 

Jisung nods. Chan nods back. Jisung rocks on his tiptoes and looks around the room at nothing in particular. Chan hums looks around in likeness. 

The air is pregnant with the conversation at the tip of their tongues, and uncomfortable one that neither is too willing to initiate. Finally, right before Jisung was about to start asking stupid questions about Twilight, Chan dodged the bullet with a clap and a bright, albiet pale smile.

“Right! So this has been an eventful week for us both and I think out of everyone involved, you’re the one with the biggest load of new information, the least amount of context and the least amount of support to deal with everything. This is an awkward and long conversation, and I want to get it out of the way, and if your face is anything to go by, you do too. So Jisung,” Chan leans forward, “Do you have any questions you want to ask?”

Jisung thinks for a long time.

“I have one question,” He decides. “What the _fuck_?” He says earnestly. Chan laughs, but Jisung holds still. He takes a brave step forward. “What the fuck is anything?” 

Chan settles him with calming hand motions, eyes crinkling in laughter but Jisung presses on.

“I’m having a peaceful night then suddenly two semi-strangers break into my store with a dying Vampire, then a ghost calls my phone and tells me to give up my blood - and I _do._ I said _yes?!_ And then I let a vampire go ham on my neck and wake up to a gaggle of weirdos in my bedroom?! And one of them wants to eat me. Oh by the way, I’m Jisung, nice to meet you.” Jisung gives Chan his hand, but the latter is laughing too much to take it, so Jisung shakes it himself. “Your home is lovely, by the way. I love what you’ve done with the place, especially the witchcraft that almost made my skin vibrate off of my bones from anxiety.” 

“Okay, okay, yes,” Chan settles himself, falling back into laughter every time he looks at Jisung’s wide-eyed look. “Okay, first of all, I want to apologise for it. All of it. Felix and Changbin should have known better than to barge in like that, and we’ll work on footing the bill for the new windows. There were hundreds of ways they could have approached the situation better … even if they were worried. They shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that, _especially_ Minho. He had no right to pressure you into giving me your virginity like that.” 

“Why do you have to phrase it like that…” Jisung feels his face growing red, but Chan only waves his hand in dismissal.

“Offering yourself as a blood donor is a _huge_ step for a human. It requires a lot of trust, a strong bond and a mutual understanding. Nowadays, most blood donors and Vampires draft contracts before even a one-time blood donation.” 

“Does Seungmin have one?” Jisung asks. 

Chan pauses, not expecting the question. “Well… Seungmin is a little different. He isn’t a blood _donor_ , as such. He’s a member of our clan - whether his human status allows it or not - he is. But even then, I don’t particularly like feeding from him without a contract - it’s a grey area of clan politics that’s a little difficult to navigate. It’s a pretty morally grey area too...”

Jisung takes the information easily. “Humans can’t be part of clans?” 

“It isn’t as simple as a friendship group - clans typically only consist of one supernatural type, our clan is a mismatch and is a little… unconventional to some, a downright crime against nature to others, even within the supernatural community. Vampire form clans with a mutual bite. Witches with a unique clan-tattoo with charmed ink. Fae typically don’t form clans, but some may exchange locks of hair as an expression of fondness and trust. So we had to improvise.”

Chan lifts himself fully off the bed. Jisung takes a conscious step forward, just in case the man is still weak to catch him if he falls. He pulls his shirt up to his ribcage, showing a tattoo. A circle, surrounded with intricate linings and strokes, with some foreign archaic language wrapping around the ring. In the center is prominent scarring, where it looks like skin has been shredded away.

“There was more, in the middle.” Chan explains. He encourages Jisung to come over and touch the scarring, it’s violent and pink, a rough scar that makes Jisung shudder to imagine the carnage it covered. “The leader of my Vampire clan bit me here to induct me into the clan, I was only a fledgling back then. Then after the supernatural purge, those who survived fled. I was the only one who came back. I lived here for a long time on my own in this house, trying to figure out exactly what to do with my life now that the clan was disbanded. Then I met Minho,” Jisung’s heart jumped with the sudden softness that crossed the elder’s face, “And many people didn’t like that.”

“I heard the story,” Jisung says softly. 

“Of course you did, it’s not a secret,” He smiles it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it doesn’t seem to weigh him down much, “Well… word travels fast. A member of my old clan found out that I had fallen for a human and confronted me. He said that I was a disgrace to the clan and I had no right to bear the bonding bite of our late clan leader, so he ripped it out of me.” 

Jisung swallowed dry. “I’m sorry.” For lack of anything better to say.

“It’s fine. I hated the scarring for a long time, it is a mark of expulsion from a clan - which is more shameful than a human could probably ever understand. Then when Felix joined and we talked about starting a clan, the four of us under one roof: Minho, Seungmin, Felix and I. Felix saw my bite scar, then designed and tattooed our clan symbol around it, as per the witches’ way. Then he did the same to himself, then he took my bite in the center.” Chan caressed the scarring of his bite gently. “All the kids have my bite and the clan symbol. The bite isn’t something I insist on… or even mention… but they all insist.” 

Jisung examined the tattoo with newfound appreciation for it. The ink meant something great - something familial in nature. Companionship is imprinted in the ink itself - a permanent mark of family. Something inside Jisung aches. 

“You’re telling me Seungmin has a tattoo?” His brain suddenly supplies. And prompt takes the idea, and runs _rampant_ with it. Seriously - now is _not_ the time for the disarray of images flooding behind his eyelids.

Chan pulls his shirt down as Jisung retreats. Jisung asks permission with his eyes to sit on the bed and does so gently. 

“Yes. Typically clan marks are meant to be visible, such as the neck or arm, but given the prejudice of this town, we keep them hidden.” 

Jisung nods, mouth suddenly very dry. 

“Although…” Chan slowly puts a hand on the untouched side of Jisung’s neck, slowly as to allow Jisung to interject. Chan’s hands are cold, only a sliver of radiation warmth from the mug he had been holding sinking into the goosebumps on Jisung’s neck. With his other hand, Chan turns Jisung’s head to look at the extent of the damage. Jisung feels a pang of oppressive guilt when Chan’s face falls. He should have covered the wound, he shouldn’t have come here waving the damage he took to save Chan’s life.

“Jisung, I-” Chan says thickly after a long minute. “I’m so sorry- I didn’t think it was so bad. I thought that I handled you with a little more care even during a frenzy…” 

Jisung wants to tell him that it’s okay, it’s only a scar, it was worth it but the words don’t come. There is no way to say the words in his mind without making it seem more than what it is, so instead he laughs. 

“I’m keeping an emergency silly straw on my person at all times now.” The acceptance in his eyes must be enough, because Chan’s shoulders loosen, he gives him a thankful grin and a hearty slap on the shoulder which sends Jisung flying into the mattress and bouncing back up with the force.

“Shit- sorry. I forget my own strength sometimes.” He helped Jisung back into position, both of them interrupted by a commotion downstairs. 

The front door opens, followed by a trampede of footsteps to meet the new body, and a chorus of boisterous yelling. The excited yelling continuous, then Minho’s head peeks through the door. “Sorry to interrupt you two love birds,” Jisung sits up straight, Chan’s arms falling from his person. “Jeongin’s home and he brought dinner. If you want anything you’ll have to hurry. Changbin’s got his target locked on the fried chicken.” 

Chan grumbles and throws the blankets off him, standing on slightly wobbly legs and stretching his aching body. Minho floats in to stand at his side, arms out to steady him despite his lack of corporeality. 

“Ask the kids to leave enough for Jisung and I, will you? We’ll be down in a minute.” Chan gasps as his back makes a loud crack in his stretching. Minho makes a comment about Chan being an old man and disappears from view. 

Jisung helpfully passes Chan his sliders and a coat. Before they leave, Chan pulls Jisung from his thoughts of fried chicken.

“You’re welcome here anytime, Jisung. I’m sure that Seungmin brought you here for good reason, given that Seungmin himself hasn’t been here in days out of safety. I’m sure he’ll explain what’s going on - but whatever the reason - you saved my life. You’re always welcome here, and you have our ongoing protection, do you understand?” The words are said lightly, but Jisung tremors with the meaning they hold. A deep vibration courses up his spin. He nods dumbly and helps the creaking Vampire down the stairs. 

  
  


The dining room is a flurry of activity which Jisung, as an only child, had never known before. Bodies narrowly avoid colliding with each other as containers of food are pulled out of a seemingly bottomless rucksack by an unfamiliar face. The containers are passed in an assembly line to the dining room table - a huge, hulking thing of wood. Jisung can _feel_ the age of the wood just by looking at it. 

“Woah,” Chan gawps at the spread, taking a seat at the head of the table. “How did you carry all this home.”

“I said it was an emergency and this kid stops to get take-out,” Changbin complains. He seems to be the only one not eyeing up the food with hunger in his eyes.

“An emergency requires sustenance, hyung,” The new character chirps. Jisung steadies himself on the corner of the huge table when the kid gets shoulder deep into his backpack and pulls out another bag. “I charmed my backpack,” He hands Chan the bag and the vampire starts to unpack it, sniffing at the contents and passing it to respective party members. 

“You’re not to perform those tricks in public - you know this,” Chan scolds. 

“You did what?” Seungmin’s voice is soft - Jisung doubts that the boy could yell if he tried, but it has a way of carrying across the room. “You shouldn’t be doing that in public, _especially_ after what happened. Seriously, Jeongin, do you have no sense of self-preservation? That’s dangerous!” 

“It’s not like I announced I was doing it! No one was around,” Jeongin defends. 

“We said it was an emergency and that you weren’t safe - and you perform witchcraft in public?!” Changbin rounds. 

Jeongin looks around at the eyes shooting glares in his direction, like he isn’t used to being scolded in such a way. He isn’t quite sure what to do with himself until another body - a familiar one - steps behind him and leans his arms over his shoulders. “It was a little lapse of judgement, but no harm no foul,” The man says. 

“No foul that we _know of,_ ” Seungmin corrects. “We’re under closer surveillance than you think - this is serious.” 

The kid has the expression of a definite youngest child. He’s clearly not used to being scolded, looking around owlishly for some type of assistance. He mumbles an apology and zips the bag closed. The one on his back - the beautiful one that is achingly familiar - guides him to a seat and plucks at his cheeks with cooing sounds, for his hands to be slapped away and wrestled with.

The others follow Seungmin with their eyes somewhat warily. Jisung wouldn’t say that a frown looks particularly home on his face - it looks like Seungmin’s facial muscles aren’t quite used to pulling his eyebrows together and the corner of his mouth drawn down. It seems that the tension in Seungmin’s shoulders is a culture shock to the others. Felix takes a gaping step out of Seungmin’s way as he walks past. 

The bodies take their places, and still Jisung is standing there like a statue. The bustle of bodies and the rush of activity felt like diving headfirst into a moshpit if he had tried to claim a chair, not to mention that everyone seemed to know exactly where to sit, and the last thing Jisung wants is to accidentally take someone’s place at the table and get hexxed for it. 

There is a space at the end of the table, the last chair where Chan is sitting as the head. As if reading his mind, Changbin kicks the chair out from beside him and waves Jisung over. The look in Changbin’s eyes is _totally_ normal and Jisung is one-hundred percent sure that the undead is just sniffing away a runny nose and definitely not smelling Jisung’s delicious flesh. Thankfully, rather than grabbing Jisung and sinking his teeth into the unmarred side of his neck, Changbin leans over him and feeds some chicken from Chan’s plate onto his own.

“Hey, hey, hey - stop that,” Chan says in English with an exaggerated frown on his face, a thick accent colouring his words although he makes no movement to stop the food being snatched from his plate. The entire table is a flurry of movements, arms seemingly detached from bodies rush over the table to stake their claim in the foods. Every time Jisung blinks a dish is moved, a cup is filled with water, containers of rice are sailing through the air from one end to another. A pair of chicken thighs hover ominously in the air for a moment before gliding easily onto Jeongin’s plate. 

“It must be a special occasion if Changbin is eating at the table,” Jeongin says. Changbin takes a sensible bite of the stolen chicken. His face screws up a little, like the taste isn’t entirely great. 

“You make me sound like a dog,” Changbin complains.

“Hyung!” Jeongin says with crocodile remorse, “I would never say such offensive things. Dogs are so cute! And you are ugly.” Jeongin dodges the chopsticks thrown his way with practised ease, face lit up in a smile. 

“You never call Kkami cute-” Hyunjin’s complaint is interrupted by Minho.

“Hyunjin, that mutt is _literally_ from the depths of hell.” Hyunjin pouts in response. “Just because your cats ran away…” 

Minho stills. The temperature of the room drops significantly as Minho slowly turns his head to Chan with a terrifyingly sweet smile on his face. “Chan, honey?” The table quietens, although he can see Felix biting back an _oh shit_ smile. Chan hums in response, paying more attention to his food. “Did you tell the kids that my cats _ran away._ ” Changbin’s chair makes unsubtle noises as he shuffles away from Minho’s cold rage.

“I figured… maybe it was for the best?” Chan justifies poorly under Minho’s icy glare. His face is entirely neutral, even smiling a little but something in the ghost’s eyes makes Jisung want to sit under the table and play with his shoelaces. “Changbin had only just reanimated - he couldn’t help it.” 

Changbin looks incredibly apologetic, only exacerbated by Hyunjin choking on a mouthful of rice and Seungmin’s “You ate Minho’s cats?!” His eyes are wide, and Jisung can’t help but appreciate how _warm_ the colour of Seungmin’s eyes are. But yes - back to the cat-eating thing.

“He didn’t develop that symptom of reanimation until _way_ later than we expected. We’re kind of lucky that it was the cats and not Seungmin,” Felix says, although smiling apologetically for his words at Minho. Minho just huffs. 

“But it _was_ Seungmin - it was Seungmin many times!” Seungmin argues, pulling up his sleeve to point at tiny, barely-there little pink sheens of scar tissue. 

“He just had a nibble,” Jeongin waves, “You’re dramatic.” 

“ _You_ wake up with Changbin chewing on your arm in the middle of the night and see how dramatic you are.” 

Jeongin aligns his chopsticks with his plate and pretends to leave the table. “Imagining Changbin in my room at all has ruined my appetite.” He laughs when Changbin yells indignantly at him, taking the brunt of the abuse. 

Jisung’s chair thankfully shuffles away from Changbin silently - just get away. He’s sure that Changbin isn’t going to turn around and sink his teeth into his flesh - but well, you can never be too sure when it comes to cannibalism. A cold, Vampiric hand on his shoulder makes him jump in surprise and he definitely doesn’t make an unmanly squeak - it didn’t happen. 

“I think we’re scaring our guest with all of this cat-eating talk.” Suddenly, all eyes are on Jisung. A choir of eyes trained on him. Jisung’s fight or flight instincts skyrocket and it takes every sensible fibre in his being to stop himself from pushing the chair out from the table and bolting. He feels Seungmin tap him encouragingly with his foot and Jisung can’t think about how much that tiny reassurance actually helped without cringing at himself. 

“Um…hi,” He waves. 

“ _You’re_ Jisung?” Hyunjin gasps, he slaps Changbin on the back of the head, “You’re talking about eating cats in front of a _human_! You know how sensitive they are!” 

“I think that I’ve seen more distressing things in the last week than Changbin eating cats…” Jisung says. He pulls his eye away from Chan’s chest when he’s caught staring and settles instead on poking at the food on his plate- 

When the hell did he have a plate sitting in front of him? This place is way too much. 

“Wait -” Hyunjin pushes Changbin’s face out of his way as he leans over to examine Jisung. When he looks at Hyunjin, nothing else in the world exists. His eyes twinkle with gold, his lips a perfect bow, his skin seems to glow with gilded warmth. Jisung can only sit and thank the Gods for letting him occupy the same space as this person - as this wonderful, amazing creature. Jisung isn’t worthy to be here, to exists in his clumsy ugliness, but the beautiful man is leaning in, eyes twinkling even more-

“Oh! My dog almost ate you!” The boy laughs loudly and claps his hands, falling back into his seat, “I remember! You were so scared - I hardly didn’t recognise you without your eyes being the size of dinnerplates.” 

Jisung snaps out of it. _What the fuck was that trance?_ Jisung nods dryly, not quite able to force his tongue to work properly. 

Seungmin sighs from his seat at the shenanigans. “Hyunjin, you’re just after scolding Changbin for talking about things around a human…” He trails off, waiting for Hyunjin to fit the puzzle pieces together.

Jisung notices something strange. Although Hyunjin and Seungmin are looking at each other - they’re not making eye contact. Seungmin seems to have his eyes trained on something _very_ close to Hyunjin’s eyes - Jisung leans over to get a better look. The little freckle, perhaps. And Hyunjin’s eyes are trained on Seungmin’s lips - which is entirely understandable. 

Suddenly, Hyunjin makes a noise and covers his eyes, turning to Jisung’s direction and bowing his head aggressively. “I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have looked into your eyes like that-” Hyunjin bows forehead-first into the side of Changbin’s skull and they both jerk back and fall off their seats. 

Jisung looks pleadingly to Seungmin for help. Seungmin - the wonderful structure of sense in this room of absurdity - gives a disappointed-but-not-surprised sigh and helps Jisung, the other two still rolling around groaning on the floor.

“Hyunjin is a faerie. He’s not a particularly good one - which is why he’s here instead of dancing around some field somewhere - so you don’t need to worry too much about him playing pranks or misleading you. If you look into his eyes for too long you’ll become enamoured and will blindly follow anything Hyunjin says. It’s usually harmless, but Hyunjin - like I said - is terrible, so there’s no telling how long it’ll take before he figures out how to snap you out of it.” 

“Seungminnie is talking from experience,” Felix elbows Seungmin suggestively, making him roll his eyes. 

“Please don’t remind me,” He scrunches his nose up. Jisung can’t help but smile at the face he makes. Hyunjin rights himself on his chair, the beanie on his head now completely askew. No one mentions it. 

“You’re the one who kept trying to kiss me-” Hyunjin squeals when a spring rolls hits him between the eyes. 

“Minho, please stop throwing food-” Chan rubs his eyes, but behind his hands Jisung can see a smile he’s desperately trying to hide. “Jisung, I’m sorry. I wish I could say normally we’re more sensible but I would be lying to your face. You’re only yet to meet Jeongin, right?” 

Jeongin waves at Jisung and Jisung waves back. 

“Seungmin hasn’t stopped complaining about you rearranging the store, I feel like I know you already,” Jeongin says painfully. 

“Oh…” Jisung knew that the rearranging had ruffled some feathers, but he really didn’t think it ran this deep. Maybe there was some importance to the layout - should he change it back? He’s not sure exactly how things were before but if Seungmin remembers then maybe he could ask for help…

“I don’t complain _that_ much,” Seungmin argues. 

Jeongin then imitates Seungmin in an overly high nasal tone. It’s enough to make Jisung laugh. He covers his mouth and tries to hide his laughter, but his shaking shoulders give him away with a look of betrayal to Seungmin. 

“If you were in it you’d understand…” Seungmin picks at his food.

Jeongin shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. I would _feel_ where everything is,” He twiddles his fingers at Seungmin, “Because I have magic!” He smiles at the crux of his sentence. God… is everyone in his house cute and/or hot as fuck? Do Supernaturals get a golden ticket to the genetic lottery or something because this is entirely unfair. Wait, no - then how does that explain Seungmin? Nonetheless, Jisung feels like some sort of slob in his sweats and hoodie that is fraying at the edge of the sleeves from love. 

The conversation continues to flow as such. Jisung does not contribute much, although he chirps in every now and again when Seungmin is animated in the conversation. He’s closer with the other human, so it’s only natural that Jisung will follow him like a lost puppy around the clan’s rapid-fire conversations.   
Jisung would consider himself a faster eater than most, having the habit to stuff his cheeks like pockets so he can clear ½ his plate in one fell swoop - but the speed at which the spread of food on the table is consumed is scarily fast. Jisung had hardly eaten his way through his samgyeopsal when he caught the ear of Jeongin and Hyunjin fighting over the last chicken leg. Felix settles the disagreement by dropping one of his own legs on Jeongin’s plate sightlessly, turned to address Seungmin. 

“Can you tell us what this is about? It’s… uncommon for us to have guests. I’m not gonna lie - I’m thinking the worst.”

“If I was told to come home early from work and lose out on half a day’s wages then it _better_ be the worst, otherwise you can hash it out with the electric company yourself,” Jeoning waves his chopsticks in Seungmin’s direction. 

Seungmin sets his own utensils down and pushes his plate away, making room for the weight of the explanation to come. Inexplicitly, Jisung feels like it’s his fault. He had been the bearer of bad news after all. Maybe if he had been more careful, maybe if he had done something differently there wouldn’t be such a difficult situation. To be honest, Jisung isn’t really sure exactly what the dilemma is, but Seungmin definitely seems under some amount of mental stress from Jisung’s story retelling. Jisung nervously pokes at his food, the grease stains being left on his plate as he pushes around the chicken makes his stomach churn. 

“We’ve been compromised,” Seungmin says. 

“Um, yeah. No shit,” Changbin says, gesturing to Chan. Chan, however, is leaning forward on his elbows, fingers entwined. He looks every part a leader, a business-man like level of focus on the conversation at hand. He sends Changbin a warning look for his interruption. Jisung had seen the vampire at his weakest, near death and also in his most vulnerable and laughable mundane - but now, his aura is indisputably _Leader._

“There’s obviously more to the story. Let’s not interrupt Seungmin since this is clearly important. I haven’t discussed you two’s thoughtless ruckus from that night, don’t think I’ve forgotten. And I should _hope_ that your lack of sense regarding both our and Jisung’s personal safety went unnoticed.” Changbin sits back, bowing his head in apology. Felix too looks ashamed, face flushing red, although he bites his lip - clearly holding back some argument of defense which Jisung imagine goes something like - _You were dying!!!!!_. Which seems like a perfectly reasonable counterpoint, but Jisung wouldn’t fancy arguing with Chan in this moment either. 

“If it wasn’t for Changbin and Felix’s urgency then you’d be dead,” Seungmin reminds him sharply. The table holds their breath at Seungmin’s tone. Jisung can’t force his surprise at Seungmin’s actions, he’s an honest guy and it reassures Jisung that Seungmin feels safe enough to openly disagree with their clan leader like this without fearing that he’ll be drained dry. Jisung knows that Chan wouldn’t - but he’s kind of like their boss, right? Even if you’re friends with your boss you’re always _very_ aware that they could fire you at the drop of a hat.

“Besides, it wasn’t _that_ night that compromised us. It was me.” If the table had been silent before, then it was a quietness only reserved for empty halls of a school corridor at night, a graveyard, or the oppressive silence after a suspicious noise when you’re home alone. 

“What do you mean it was you?” Chan breaks the silence, face lax in concern, like he isn’t sure what he’s hearing. 

“Someone saw me leaving Jisung’s with the delivery this morning-” Seungmin proceeds to give them the abridged version, although it’s incomplete. Seungmin had cut Jisung off as soon as his name was mentioned, but it’s enough to cause concern. The atmosphere of the room shifts into something heavy, the tension is thick and stuffy. Fearful and concerned eyes are being exchanged. Under the table, Hyunjin squeezes Changbin’s hands tight, eyes darting nervously. “I’m not sure if he has any other information to back his suspicions, but once the first ball drops the others will likely follow suit.” Seungmin’s delivery is straight-to-the-point, even if his stress is written on his face. Jeongin, who seems to be adverse to touch, lets Felix shuffle close to his side. 

The silence is thick enough that Jisung starts to hear a buzzing in his ear. Changbin makes a slight wheeze sound with every inhale, probably a side effect of being not-alive. The table creaks with every shift and movement.

A glass shatters against the wall. 

Minho, who had been silent up until now, stands up and storms off, the door swinging shut of its own own accord. Jisung had nearly fallen out of his seat at the sudden noise, if not for Chan’s steadying hand shooting out to him. 

Immediately, Seungmin makes to follow, not even sparing a glance at the table, but Chan stops him, pushing him back into the chair gently. “He’ll still be listening. Let him cool off a little. He’s just worried that-”

“He’s worried that I’m going to end up the same way he did,” Seungmin grinds out. The others around the table cast their looks elsewhere, their own hands, the forgotten meals, the grooves of the old table. The table makes a huge splintering sound. Chan looks up surprised, a huge welt in the wood from where he had been gripping the table. A little red-eared at the display of strength, Chan shifts his plate to hide the damage. 

“So Seungmin’s been compromised?” Hyunjin croaks. 

Chan scrubs at his skull, suddenly looking a lot older. Maybe not hundreds-of-years older, Jisung definitely isn’t that cruel. “This isn’t good.” 

Seungmin looks around at the table, “I’m sorry but-” He gestures to the head of the table, “Chan was almost _killed_ and you’re all more focused on one person being suspicious of my delivery run. We can charm my bike, I can change my schedule - that is manageable. But someone broke into our home and _stabbed_ Chan in the chest! And you’re more concerned about me?” His tone remains calm and even but the wild look in his eyes is borderline hysterical. Jisung can’t help but look away, embarrassed that he can’t match the passion in those eyes. He has too little information to be as worked up. 

“You’re human.” The clan nods at their leaders words, like it’s the only explanation they need. Clearly, Seungmin isn’t convinced.

“I’m as much a part of the clan as anyone else, no? That’s what you endlessly tell me, even though I’m human, I’m still a part of the clan - yet I get different treatment.” 

“You can’t protect yourself like we can. You’re more vulnerable, we’re cautious, Minnie,” Chan says softly. 

“Hyunjin almost gets eaten by his dog three times a week,” Seungmin says tersely. Hyunjin doesn’t even argue.

“Seungmin,” Chan takes Seungmin’s hand in his own. “I’m sorry if you feel like we’re babying you - it really isn’t my intention, and we all see you as an equal because you _are._ You bear the mark of the clan just like all of us do.” Chan lets Seungmin’s hand return to its lap, and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms and shifting a little. “But two thirds of the humans under my leadership have wound up dead.” His face paints a sad smile, but Changbin is having none of it.

“I wasn’t under your leadership.” Changbin’s voice is gravel-like with his snarl. “Stop blaming yourself for my asshole guild, it’s no one’s fault but theirs-”

“Maybe not by clan mark, but you were part of the clan in all the ways it mattered.” Chan says kindly. Across the table, Felix kicks Changbin’s shin lightly to grab his attention. Changbin’s posture immediately softens when Felix shoots him a small smile. 

“Besides, Seungmin,” Jeongin says around a mouthful of noodles, “If you died we would never hear the end of it. I can practically hear Chan’s dramatic moonlit monologues.” 

Seungmin scoffs. Jeongin’s comment acting as a palette cleanser to shift the mood back into something palpable. “That’s not the point anyway. Even more than me: he was suspicious of Jisung. Moreso than people were generally suspicious about Auntie - people talked about her, but no one ever outright confronted her.” 

“Yeah because they’d lose their balls…” Hyunjin comments. Jisung can’t help but have a snicker at that. His Auntie was strange, but she was a force of nature. Even in the small snippets of youth that he would hear from his mother, she was like an unpredictable typhoon in the normalcy of his cookie-cutter family. 

“Jisung is an easy target,” Felix agrees. Jisung can’t help but feel the offense, crying out indignantly at the accusation. Felix is comforting, he feels safe around the blonde boy. Eventually he will feel at ease around everyone… except maybe Changbin given his tendency to nibble on humans apparently. 

“Oh please, you almost shit yourself that time in the street when Kkami ran towards you - she’s practically harmless!” Jisung can’t quite believe the truth of Hyunjin’s statement when he can see the slip of a bandage underneath his sleeve.

“Yeah, not counting rabies…” Changbin mutters.

“Shut it, maggot mouth-” 

“Kids.” Chan sighs. Jisung suddenly thinks that Chan has an endless well of patience. “This is serious. Jisung, what exactly did he say to you?” 

“Uh, well, Seungmin only got half of the story,” Jisung fumbles at the sudden attention. Especially when Chan is looking at him so seriously, it’s giving him serious flashbacks to high school. “It’s kind of… It’s like - It’s a little bad. Well no, it’s really bad. Like he was talking crazy shit.” 

Seungmin leans forward a little to catch his eye. “Whatever it is, it’s important. We’ve heard it all before.” The entire table nods at the statement, so Jisung, with bated breath, recites the conversation as best as he can from memory. He’s fairly certain he’s mentioned all the important parts - but there’s something that’s nipping at his brain telling him that he’s forgotten something important. Nonetheless he drives on, recreating the scene as concisely as possible. 

“...so I don’t know what he was implying about you and Seungmin but… yeah. That’s what he said…” Jisung uncomfortably retold the horrible accusations. Chan didn’t flinch, but Seungmin was burning holes in the table with his eyes. His eyebrows furrowed so low that his eyes are hardly visible at all. Chan hadn’t been lying when he said that Minho would continue to listen, because said ghost descended from the ceiling with hell fire.

“That fucking asshole! Who was it Jisung?!” Suddenly Minho is hovering inches from Jisung’s face, the cool air sending goosebumps all over his body. Jisung shifts back in the chair, trying to gain some distance.

“I don’t know! I don’t know anyone here-” 

“All these years later and they’re still accusing you of this shit? Seriously?! How many fucking times are they gonna drag your name through the mud-” 

“Minho,” Chan says gently, urging Minho to get out of the table. Minho does, albeit still thunderous. He hovers between Chan and Seungmin. “Calm down, it’s old news-” 

Here, Chan made a monolith mistake that everyone around the table, Jisung included, immediately winced at. The vampire was like, 200 years old and still somehow forgets the age old rule of calming someone down: do NOT tell them to calm down. As expected, Minho explodes (along with some of the glasses on the table. Jeongin groans as he gets covered in soda).

“Calm down?! _Calm down?!_ Almost fifteen years later and they’re still trying to pin you as a god damn sex offender. They’re still trying to spin this bullshit tale of you corrupting a traumatised little boy into some type of clan blood-bag and sex slave-” 

“This isn’t about me,” Seungmin cuts him off, conscious of the tone shifting somewhere much less comfortable than anyone is willing to deal with. “It isn’t about Chan either. If the word spreads and people have reason enough to be suspicious to the point of confrontation then who's to say the shop - or Jisung isn’t at risk?” 

Although still visibly vibrating, Minho drops it. Jisung takes the conversation change like a starving child to bread.

“Should we have left the shop unmanned?” Jeongin suddenly asks. Jisung isn’t particularly worried about the shop in terms of his finances, but he’s learning that the shop is the heart of the supernatural community here, and without it, they would be left in a very difficult and unsafe position. Jeongin likely is on the exact same train of thought.

“It seemed more like he was trying to warn me, or recruit me to the ‘other side’,” He delivers the air quotes, “I don’t think they’re at the point of admitting me as a lost cause and burning the shop down or anything.” 

“If the shop is at risk…” Chan starts, but he needn’t continue. They know. They know much more than Jisung does.

“If they chase Jisung out - which they might once they gather enough reasonable doubt that Jisung is siding with the supernatural population. With two strikes on the pawn shop already, there’s no chance they’d keep the place standing. The entire community will be without any protection,” Felix says, licking his lip nervously. 

“They’ll leave - and us with them,” Hyunjin says, giving Felix a reassuring pat on the back when he falls into his hands.

“I can’t uproot my life _again,”_ Felix says - or something along those lines. He says it in English and Jisung’s bilingual abilities are getting rusty from disuse. 

“Not if they get killed first.” Changbin shoots Jeongin a look for his words, but it isn’t to say that the witch is wrong. 

“Do you think they’ll try another purge?” Hyunjin directs the question to Chan - all wide-eyed and twisted eyebrows.

Chan doesn’t answer, too deep in thought to fully catch wind of Hyunjin’s question. Minho steps in with a cool tone to answer on his behalf. “This generation are all pussies. They wouldn’t try it.”

“I think we’ve learned our lesson on letting our guard down,” Chan then turns to the table, addressing every seat, “We’ve become complacent with our safety measures. This is serious, and we need to triple our precautions. Hyunjin can alert the neighbours of the new developments - and tell them Seungmin isn’t taking delivery orders until further notice.” 

“What?” Seungmin looks at Chan like he’s ridiculous.

“It’s for your safety-”

“Who is going to get the supplies for the wardings? Who is going to get _you_ blood bags since you’re so retentive on using me as a doner? Who is going to get the werecouple their food from the butchers? If I’m being put on house arrest then who is going to earn money? Like it or not - we have bills to pay and God knows Jeongin’s pocket money can’t cover the cost of the bills - let alone food!” Seungmin reels himself back. “Sorry, I’m not being disrespectful. That isn’t a solution, Chan. It’ll put more strain on the community, which will make us weaker.” 

Chan, although not entirely pleased with Seungmin’s tone of voice, accepts his disagreement easily. He thinks greatly on it, before coming to a stalemate. “Let me think about it overnight. Minho will argue on your side, won’t you?”

“If me and Seungmin are locked in this house together I might just kill myself,” Minho replies flatly, grimacing at Seungmin. Seungmin swipes through his arm playfully, earning him another grimace.

This is all well and good - but it doesn’t help Jisung. He is still here, without any direction. So, he voices his concerns. 

“Um… what do I do?” Sounding just as lost as he feels. “I don’t want to… die.” 

“Dying is the least of your worries,” Minho says nonchalantly. 

Jisung nods, then continues to pick around his food for some minutes, the phrase circling in his head over and over again. The conversation has long moved on when Jisung pipes up: “Hey, what the fuck did that even mean?” 

Changbin only laughs and pulls Jisung into a headlock - oh my God he’s _sniffing -_ Jisung fights him off. “Chan won’t let anything happen to you or the shop.” 

“Yeah! Stop worrying so much, eat some more noodles,” Jeongin says helpfully, sliding a container across the table, “They won’t try anything given how much ‘protective jewellery’ and shit he sells,” He smirks.

Jisung casts Chan a meaningful glance, remembering the promise he had made him in the bedroom. It is a comfort, if even a little one. There is something in Chan’s eyes that burn with protectiveness, even though his face is kind and his body currently weak, something inside him says: _I dare you to even try it._

Chan claps his hands. “Right. We’ve all been given a lot to think about this evening. I can see by the looks on your faces that you’re all tired, so I think it’s best if we ruminate on it tonight and approach it with a clear head in the mornings when our emotions are settled.” 

“Don’t vampires sleep during the day?” Jisung asks stupidly, then immediately covers his mouth. He _is_ tired - his brain-mouth filter just decided to stop functioning completely. Thankfully Chan only laughs good-naturedly at his slip of the tongue.

“Typically, yes. But I don’t sleep much at any time.” 

“Because we’re loud~” Minho sing-songs. Chan laughs, the dimples healthy on his cheeks.

The mention of sleep seemed to have the same effect on everyone. Suddenly, everyone around the table becomes painfully aware of the exhausting onslaught of information - even Hyunjin complaining of a headache from the amount of overworking it’s done. The assembly line of clearing up starts, everyone stacking their plates and cups and all sorts of containers in a smooth assembly line, only to dump it all in front of Changbin. Changbin grumbles about it, but begins taking the stacks of dishes to the kitchen for washing. 

“Where is Jisung gonna sleep?” Seungmin asks in the midst of clearing up, interrupting Jisung from asking Changbin if he needs help. Thankful for the excuse not to engage in anxiety-driven politeness, Jisung sits back down. “We don’t have any spare beds.” 

“Simple: Seungmin swaps rooms with Felix and Changbin, they’ve got a twin room” Minho says. 

Felix looks up sharply at his name, then is quick to rebuke the decision. “But Seungmin only has a double! I can’t share a bed with Changbin… I mean - I don’t mind, I’m happy to do anything to accommodate but I don’t think Changbin would want to-” Felix flusters.

The group share a look. Jisung isn’t sure what the look is, but it definitely is a _look._

“I think he’ll manage,” Minho says with an amused glance. He redirects to Jisung, “You might have to shake the covers to dislodge the inch of dust on ‘ _Changbin’s’_ bed.” Accompanied with air quotes. Felix makes a series of splutters which sound like an attempt at a rebuttal, before he makes the executive decision to leave before his pride is hurt any more. 

“I don’t understand,” Jisung whispers to Seungmin, “Aren’t they dating?” Jisung could be wrong, but those two definitely had _something_ going on. Seungmin rolls his eyes in response.

“Yes and no. They are but they aren’t. They think we don’t know that they are - but I also think Changbin doesn’t know that they are.” 

Hyunjin falls into gulls of laughter at Seungmin - until Jeongin pokes him with his toes, “I don’t know why you’re laughing, hyung. That means they’re moving right beside your room. Good luck getting a good night’s rest.” 

Seungmin brings Jisung upstairs into “their” room. A temporary shelter - but Jisung opens the chest of drawers to see them already populated with clothes. Seungmin hums as he checks his own drawers and bedsheets. “Looks like Minho knew this would happen. He likes to keep himself busy when he’s mad.” Seungmin flops onto the bed, exhausted. “At least it’s less work for me.” 

Jisung follows suit, hopping on his own bed, only to cough and splutter at the whirlwind of dust he exhaled from the bed. Sure, he got the gist of what Minho was implying but he didn’t think it was _serious._

Honestly, this feels like an opportunity that Jisung should take to get to know Seungmin, ask him all the questions that had been filling up the notes app of his phone but if he’s completely honest - his brain is fried. This day has been such a turbulent ride that Jisung doesn’t even want to think about it any longer in case his guts reject the onslaught of emotions and information and he just pukes all over the hardwood floor. It could happen.

Jisung fights with the covers to dislodge the dust for the better part of twenty minutes, Seungmin already half-asleep on the other bed, eyebrows knitted together. So rather than sitting up with Seungmin, getting to know this strange world, getting to know _him,_ braiding their hair, talking about boys, yadda yadda, Jisung toes his shoes off, discards his pants on the floor and lets himself try to drift off into sleep. 

When he sends Seungmin one last glance, Jisung has an urge to rub his thumb there, in the spot between the brows to smooth out the wrinkles - but he isn’t an insane person so instead he just turns over in the foreign bed and tries not to shit his pants every time the aged house makes an ominous creak, or a moan, or a rattle, or another moan, or another creak or - a lot of moans- 

_Oh Christ._

Jisung plugs his ears and shoves his head under the pillow. No wonder Chan doesn’t get any sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Kiwi stick to the intended word limit of a fic for once in your life <3 
> 
> Sorry this is so long!!! :( I got carried away.. I just love the dynamics.. 
> 
> (not beta read, so please let me know of any mistakes!) 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed ~ Let's talk in the comments!! ~~ 
> 
> ~ Kiwi 🥝


	4. Foreign Disagreement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait with this! I wanted to finish the hulk that is my 2min Angel AU - so that took priority for a while! Updates here will hopefully be more frequent now :) 
> 
> **CHAPTER WARNINGS:  
> Non-graphic descriptions/references of cannibalism (RE: Changbin), Mentions of fasting. 
> 
> NOTE: All English dialogue is in italics!

Jisung, as expected, sleeps terribly. Even once the impressive creaking had climaxed, every little settling of the house or whistle of wind through the drafts had Jisung sitting up in a cold sweat. He might have got a generous three hours or so. It’s hard enough to sleep in a new house, nevermind one that had been broken into only a week ago in an attempted murder. Thoughts like these weren’t exactly helping him sleep, but they kept popping in unwelcomed. Once the sun started to sneak through the gaps of the curtains, Jisung decided to give up on his rest entirely and made his way down stairs, carefully trying to avoid every creaky floorboard on the way down and still somehow managed to hit every single one of them. 

He wasn’t sure whether he was wholly welcome to walk around the house by himself, but he grew concerned that his tossing and turning on the creakiest bed known to mankind would rouse Seungmin from his sleep - and if the dark circles that had been wiped clear after Seungmin washed the makeup off his face are any indication - the sleep is much needed. 

Given that it was pretty much the ass-crack of dawn, Jisung starts when he opens the kitchen door with a creak only to catch a pair of eyes looking back at him in curiosity. Although, it seems Jisung isn’t the only one who had trouble sleeping, because both Jeongin and Minho look gaunt and sleepless. Jeongin’s hair is a mess, sticking up at all angles which is only highlighted by the halo of light coming from behind him through the window of the back door. 

“Good morning,” Jisung greets, closing the door behind him as quietly as possible. It lets out an ungodly click when it closes. Jeongin replies with a grunt and promptly falls back onto his arms, face-down on the table. Jisung stands around a little, uncomfortable with trespassing, but Minho just nudges his head in the direction of the chair at the breakfast table, the same seat Jisung had chipped some of the paint off with his nails. He takes it gladly. 

“Did you sleep well?” Minho asks, going back to mindlessly stirring some eggs at the stove. 

“Not really.” 

“I didn’t think you would be the type to rise this early,” Minho hums. “Poor Jeongin’s body clock rips him from his slumber at the first crack of light, isn’t that right?” 

Jeongin lifts himself back up, scrubbing the sleep off of his face. His eyes are still carrying the weight of sleep. “I don’t know how Chan manages. If I have one bad night, I’m like a ghoul all day.” 

Minho snorts. “Trust me, you’re worse than a ghoul.” 

“Did you sleep well?” Jisung isn’t sure whether to add honorifics or not, so he decides to sidestep that awkwardness by avoiding his name altogether. Minho turns to him with a little amusement. 

“Ghosts don’t need sleep.” Oh, yeah. Duh. Minho breaks Jisung’s stuttered attempt at an apology. “But I am tired. Chan and I had a lot to discuss last night and he wouldn’t sleep until we had everything ironed out. It was a long night.”

“It’s a fucking headache - sorry! That hurts!”Jeonging protects his head from the spatula. Minho throws the weapon in the sink after hitting Jeongin on the skull with it. He easily grabs another from the drawer and continues like nothing happened. 

“Jeongin, since you’re so chipper this morning why don’t you make some coffee? I’m sure the other kids will be awake soon.” 

“I don’t think Felix and Changbin will be awake anytime soon…” Despite his words, Jeongin rises, loose t-shirt reaching his thighs as he easily reaches the top of the shelf to pull some cups down. He pulls down three cups, ranging in obvious ages, and begins to prepare some coffee. Jisung feels a little embarrassed for just sitting there doing nothing, but the kitchen is laughably small to house seven people - it is a small dated farmhouse after all, so even with the pair bumbling around, it feels crowded. Jisung doesn’t want to imagine how the kitchen might be during a typical dinner time. 

Minho plates the eggs and the toast, scolding Jeongin while doing it. “Don’t be so blatant to their face, you know how defensive Changbin gets.” 

Jeongin rolls his eyes, “I know - but I also used to share the room with Felix when Changbin would sneak down once a week to see him. He would stay up all night  _ swooning. _ I want to rattle him sometimes.” Jeongin shakes the milk carton, imagining it as Changbin’s head. The milk frothes enough to turn Jisung’s coffee into a cappuccino. Jisung takes it gratefully and holds it close to his chest, cautious not to spill any of it over the borrowed white tee. Jeongin takes the second cup, and the third is placed at the empty chair. The old house does nothing to keep the cold morning bite out of the air - or maybe it’s just the chill from Minho’s body. Or, lack of body. Whatever.

The plate of food hovers in front of Jisung’s face, and it startles him so much he almost screams. In his defense - a plate of food was  _ hovering in front of his face. _ Minho drops the food onto the table and shushes Jisung, like he was being ridiculous.

“Chan has only just fallen asleep. He’s hardly slept all week. If you wake him up I’ll haunt your eggs.” Jisung, flabbergasted, accepts the knife and fork handed to him. He looks to the plate and back to the ghost, who watches him with an intense stare as if to say  _ ‘Eat it.’ _

With a gulp and wide eyes, Jisung shoves a thankful forkful of eggs into his mouth. Minho floats back, seemingly satisfied. Despite his cold exterior, Minho seems to be very aware of the needs of others, even welcoming… in his own off-putting way. Maybe it’s a trait evolved after taking so many strays under his roof. 

Jisung is a little confused, after all, he had come down while Minho was in the middle of cooking the meal. He considers Jeongin with a heavy drop of his stomach. Jeongin sucks down his coffee like it’s his lifeline. 

Just as Jisung had feared - like he has some type of horrible glimpse into the future - Jeongin pouts at the ghost. “Where is my breakfast? I thought you were cooking for me.” 

Minho crosses his arms, dangerous smile on his face. “You want breakfast? I can turn you into breakfast. What would Jeongin like marinated in?” He moves towards Jeongin with outstretched hands only for Jeongin to dodge him. 

“I’m not food!” 

Minho floats back, most of the jest gone from his form. “After that feast last night I’m surprised you were able to fit through the door - and don’t think I didn’t see you sneaking down the stairs at midnight for leftovers. With the amount you ate, you would be perfectly satiated to fast for a week. Seriously,” Minho tuts, “Seungmin is stressing about money and your endless void of a stomach isn’t helping. You and Felix can fast for a while.”

Jeongin hums and goes back to his coffee, no longer interested in the conversation, although the guilt nips a little at Jisung’s gut. 

Before Jisung’s guilt could gnaw through him any longer, a familiar face joins them. Jisung knows vaguely in the back of his mind that this is one of those moments that if you don’t tear your eyes away, then you’ll end up staring, unable to look away. He knows this and he decides to ignore it. If Seungmin thinks he’s a little strange and off putting for staring at his glorious bed head and sleep-heavy eyes, hidden behind glasses that are the size of a windshield then it’s a consequence he’s fully willing to take. 

Seungmin immediately flops onto the spare seat, already drinking the coffee. “Thank you, Jeongin,” He mumbles, eyes half-closed. Jisung has a whirl of affection for this sleep-heavy Seungmin. Most people’s voices are gravelly or rough first thing in the mornings, but Seungmin’s sounds oddly  _ more _ silky and loose than usual. Like his voice just  _ opens _ up and it’s a day-long battle to restrain it. Jisung downs his coffee like a shot. Good God, his mind is sabotaging him in all sorts of ways this morning. 

“How do you know it was Jeongin?” Minho asks. 

Srungmin’s face crumbles into an unamused frown, “You’ve never made me coffee in your life, stop acting sweet for Jisung.” 

“He made me eggs,” Jisung says. He feels the need to defend Minho, considering he  _ did  _ offer him breakfast, which is more than Jisung would have thought to do. Big mistake, apparently, because Seungmin meets Minho’s smug grin with a scowl. He grumbles into the coffee and accepts the slice of toast that Jisung offers. 

Minho at least gives Seungmin the courtesy of fully waking up before hounding him with information. Jisung watches Seungmin blink fully into the land of the living with great intrigue. Seungmin’s blinks becoming less groggy, his reponses to Jeongin’s small talk growing slowly in length, until he’s ruffling his hair into something more manageable and reaching for a banana from the fruit bowl.

“Your dreams were loud last night, Seungmin,” Jeongin accuses. Seungmin considers it for a moment, then shrugs. Clearly this is a conversation that happened many times, because Seungmin just continues eating his breakfast like he couldn’t care less. 

Eventually, Seungmin finally turns to Minho, who had been circling around him, eyes boring holes into Seungmin’s skull - it’s impressive how disinterested Seungmin was with all of this first thing in the morning. 

“Did you and Chan reach a conclusion?” 

“Yes. But Chan  _ insists _ on running everything past you first,” Minho sits inside Jeongin, making the younger screech and eject himself from the seat. It’s even  _ more _ impressive how Minho can act so innocent despite phasing through the witch. Jeongin grumbles something about going to find Hyunjin and leaves. “You’re not scheduled to work for a few days, so we’ll lay low for a while. No one in or out, your deliveries can be postponed for a few days, if they need anything urgently we can work something out. Whenever you both eventually are phased back into business as usual, Jisung and Felix will charm your bike and the shop. Chan also wants you both to carry around some protective crystals for extra protection.”  _ Great. More fucking rocks. _

“Wait -  _ both  _ of us? Can I not go back to normal now?” Jisung asks. Minho shakes his head, but Seungmin answers on his behalf, speaking Minho’s mind exactly.

“You should probably stay here for a couple of days. I think Chan is reluctant to risk you going back to the shop to live on your own so soon.” 

Jisung fiddles with the handle of his coffee. “But… won’t it be suspicious that I’ve closed for a few days?”

Minho waves him off. “Just say that you’re closed for Halloween. I’m sure no one would be surprised given your… personality.” 

Jisung almost drops his fork. “It’s Halloween?” 

Seungmin casts him a concerned look. “Yes?”

Devastated, Jisung takes his head into his hands and moans lowly, conscious of Chan sleeping upstairs. “So this means I can’t even buy candy.” 

  
  
  


Jisung gets given some more clothes to last him the few days he’s likely to be spending in the home and in return he is given chores, hardly a guest so much as a lodger with no money to pay with. Hyunjin offers to let him tag along while he feeds the hellhound, which Jisung obviously declines. One run-in with the horrible creature is enough for one lifetime, thank you very much.

Changbin is in the process of steering Jisung out of the backdoor with a heavy arm around his shoulders, assuring him that cleaning the shed isn’t difficult and that with both of them working together, it won’t take long at all. Felix snatches Jisung from under him and pushes Changbin over the threshold of the door with the toe of his shoe. Changbin doesn’t get a word in before the door closes in his face and Felix is smiling brightly at him and waving through the window. 

“Trust me: you do  _ not _ have the stomach for helping Changbin clean out his shed,” Felix explains. His makeup is minimal today, clear skin brandishing delicate freckles and eyes rimmed only with the gentlest ghost of pink. Somehow, even with minimal effort, the boy still looks almost alien in beauty - not quite the same as Hyunjin, who  _ definitely _ could lure some people to their deaths with his entrancing look, but Felix is more of a magnetism, a gentle pull of attractiveness. Jisung hadn’t worn makeup since he left Seoul, and now he’s thinking that maybe he should have. 

Felix pulls him up the stairs and up a suspiciously unstable ladder, and  _ of course _ Jisung follows blindly. Why wouldn’t he?    
Well, here’s why he wouldn’t: the attic looks like something straight out of a cheap straight-to-DVD teen horror flick. There’s a pentagram slashed into the floor with paint, marked by huge candles who climb from a hill of wax, each layer a different colour than the last. Shelves and tables and drawers and cabinets are crammed into every possible nook and cranny of the attic, displaying more crystals and rocks than Jisung could fathom, a collection of books: leather-bound and dated, all sorts of things in jars and bundles of flora. It’s like Felix took all of Jisung’s most-hated stock and duplicated it a thousand times and threw it into the attic. 

Maybe the atmosphere would be less terrifying if there was a tasteful lamp or something instead of Felix lighting all his candles. Surely a home this old poses as a fire risk? The only window is a small little circular one at the end of the long attic, a pinprick of light amongst the dust and glitter floating in the air.

Felix is staring at him like he’s waiting for Jisung to say something, biting down on an excited smile. “Um… it’s…. Atmospheric?” 

Felix only laughs, loving Jisung’s naivety with all things supernatural. He carefully shuts the attic trapdoor behind Jisung and tells him to watch his footing, leading him with a gentle pull of the wrist to the center of the madness. “I’ve been meaning to tidy up… it’s a little… it’s a little messy up here at the moment. Jeongin should be helping me, but he’s managed to worm his way out of it for a month now, so I figured I could take advantage of the extra pair of hands….unless you  _ want _ to help Changbin in the shed?” 

Jisung immediately pulls himself away from the animal skill he was poking at in horror. “What’s so bad about cleaning a shed?” 

“It’s where Changbin prepares his food if he doesn’t get something from the butchers. He usually gets rabbits and foxes from the woods. He likes the taste of the butcher meat but it tastes better when it’s warm.” 

Jisung isn’t sure what to say in response so he says nothing. Felix catches the silence and realises too late that maybe he shouldn’t be so blasé to the less traditional sides to their lives. “It’s probably weird to you, right?” He’s apologetic enough, but there’s the ongoing string of amusement. 

“Is it not weird to you that he wants to eat people? Has he - oh shit, wait- is that offensive? I shouldn’t ask things like that, right? Ignore me I’ll just-” Jisung rewinds and mimes coming back up the steps to the attic, giving Felix an overly friendly wave. God, his mouth runs  _ laps _ around him.

Whatever God had been spiting Jisung thus far decided he deserves the briefest hint of benevolence because Felix only smiles at his horrible fumbling. 

“It’s fine, you can ask. To be honest, Changbin is a special case, because none of us knew what to expect when he reanimated. We all had to learn, so believe me, there’s no stupid questions,” Felix leans agains a desk, carefully navigating his weight as not to topple the array of items practically overspilling from its lid. “First, the cats went missing. We assumed they’d ran away. Then one night, we woke up to Seungmin screaming the house down - Changbin had sunken his teeth into his arm and was in some sort of hunger-frenzy… Chan had to shove his fingers between Seungmin and Changbin’s teeth and pull him off by the jaw. Don’t worry-'' Felix reassures, “He has it under control now. But it was a shock to us, because that was the first  _ major _ symptom of reanimation that he’d shown.” 

“Seems like a significant symptom,” Jisung comments, eyes wide. He trusts the group and - despite every information he learns about the man -  _ Changbin  _ too. But he can’t help the image of Changbin biting into his flesh from popping up in his mind. 

“You’d be surprised. In terms of the symptom-roulette, we actually got really lucky. Really lucky,” Felix presses his fingers into a bundle of dried flora to occupy his senses. They gently snap under his delicate touch. “He’s still… Changbin. A lot of reanimations result in a complete change or loss of personality… and I couldn’t imagine anything worse. He’s still Changbin, and any other symptoms that comes with it is a welcome one.” Jisung looks away because he feels like he’s intruding on the directionless affection crossing Felix’s face. The other boy manages to shake the look off, a little embarrassed.

“Anyway! If you want, you can just sit up here and chill, otherwise Minho will pull you into scrubbing the grime from the bathroom tiles and no one deserves  _ that  _ on their first morning at the house.” Felix jumps off the desk and starts gathering some of the books. Little ribboned tassels peek from between the gilded pages, slips of silk in red and blue and all sorts of colours. The books stack higher until Felix holds their balance under the tuck of his chin.

“I can help.” Jisung takes some of the books Felix was unable to stack and follows him to the bookcase, slipping them in the places Felix tells him to.

He follows this pattern as such. Picking up whatever scraps Felix leaves behind and puts them in their place. Rocks and crystals; bottles of oils and gels; candles; collections of flora bundled together with slips of silk; mesh bags of pressed flower heads; even the odd bag filled with things that clatter together with a sound that makes Jisung too nervous to peek inside. 

Despite the house being filled with supernatural creatures, the place is oddly… normal. Well, as normal as a houseful of rag-tag people can be. They have a  _ chore chart _ stuck up on the fridge for God’s sake - and a shopping list!! Maybe this is how big households function, Jisung wouldn’t know. Maybe big families need chore charts and appointment memos and shopping lists and meal plans stuck to the fridge with faded animal magnets. There definitely seems to be a clear hierarchy in place, although it seems the youngest played with the notions of it. Chan is the clan leader, and Minho, by association, is next in line. The lines get blurred from there, but from what Jisung can understand Jeongin is the youngest, but he sits at the head of the table opposite Chan, with all the older boys at his side. Seungmin, being human, it only makes sense that he’s one of the youngest, too. Yet he argues with Chan, he openly defies his leader and Chan  _ welcomes it _ . 

The entire household is a bizarre ragtag of people, and their positions and roles within the group are only more and more unidentifiable the more Jisung thinks about it.

Bringing up Seungmin was a terrible idea and Jisung curses his stupid traitorous brain for doing it. Now he’s handing Felix rocks while thinking about how Seungmin’s eyes squint when he’s mad, or how his knuckles grow white when he squeezes his anger there, or how the tendons in his usually delicate neck work under the skin to hold back his arguments. Or how Seungmin’s shoeless foot gently nudges Jisung to check that he’s still logged on to the conversation. The worst of it is that Seungmin wasn’t even Jisung’s type. Jisung’s type was more cool, leather jackets and nicotine-tainted kisses in the back of some over-compensating expensive car. Seungmin is an elementary-school teacher looking thing and it is driving Jisung absolutely crazy. Seungmin is  _ so _ disrespectful for not even taking Jisung’s type into consideration before ruining his life. 

“Can you pass me that book, the one stuck together with tape, no - the one with English letters.” Felix asks, pointing to some poor book that looks like it's barely hanging together. Jisung carefully pulls it from the shelf and squints at the letters, trying to reach into the cobwebbed room of his English skills. 

“ _ ‘Celtic Spells for the Intermediate Beldam: A Journey into the Dark Charm.’ _ Is this it?” Jisung hands it over. Felix opens and flexes the spine of the book as if it isn’t a strong breeze away from turning to dust. He scans the document: huge walls of English so dated that Jisung can’t recognise half of the terms - although that may be due to the horrible chicken scratch handwriting. Felix copies something onto a slip of paper, then closes the book and slides it under a conspicuous looking cabinet. 

“Dark magic: you saw nothing.” He winks. “ _ And your English is very good, where did you learn _ ?” He says in English. Jisung’s brain scrambles at the sudden language change.

“ _I went to an international school. You’re… Australian, right?”_ Felix nods in confirmation. “ _So… um…_ _how come you’re in Korea now?”_ Felix's face falters. Maybe Jisung is overstepping, but right before he tries to take it back, Felix responds with his own question, a gaging question. 

“How are you finding this? All of this.” Something in Felix’s eyes and the deep rumbling change to his voice suggests that he’s looking the ugly truth. Jisung doesn’t feel like he’d be judged for being honest, nor does he feel the pressure of the presence of the clan leader to be polite. 

“Honestly, man,” Jisung whistles. “This sucks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and all, and my 12-year-old self is definitely shitting his pants right now, but it’s  _ scary _ . Suddenly I’m at risk of being murdered or thrown out of my shop? There’s too much to process all at once I feel like my head is being crammed so much that I’m going to start floating. But… but I’ll get over it. I think you’re all pretty cool, and you’ve been nice to me - all of you. Without even a question or anything, just so annoyingly hospitable.” 

Felix considers Jisung’s answer for a minute. Jisung isn’t uncomfortable with the silence: he is patient with it. 

“Australia is…” Felix starts. It goes nowhere. It takes him a little while to get going again. “I was part of a coven - but I hadn’t got the tattoo yet, I was still a minor at the time. It was a pretty big coven, there were some hundred of us in the city. Hunters found us, I don’t know how but that doesn’t matter - these things happen senselessly. All of my clan were arrested and given bullshit charges about  _ cult activity _ \- I was let go because I wasn’t tattooed - it was the only scrap of evidence they could get to support their narrative.” Felix lets out a weighty sigh. “The hunters that found us have a huge network around Australia, even in the bush. I was warned in layman's terms that if any of the hunters saw me, they’d kill me on sight.” 

Jisung coughs around the silence that follows. “That’s… that’s rough.” 

Felix only shrugs. “I had to move to Korea on my own. I didn’t speak a word of it, either. I travelled around like a lost puppy trying to keep myself safe from anyone that might sniff me out. Chan found me when I accidentally got off at the wrong bus stop and ended here. I guess he could sense me, or something, because he was by my side almost the second I stepped off the bus and told me I wasn’t safe to wander around by myself. He took me in straight away without a question, and Seungmin was excited to have a friend who was more fun than Chan. He was so small back then.” Felix coos at the memory.

“How old was Seungmin when you arrived?” 

“Ten or so. I’ve been here for eleven years - I know I look young, witches age slower than humans, most supernaturals do. Hyunjin and Jeongin accidentally got kidnapped by an  _ actual _ cult and wound up here on happenstance eight years ago.” 

“And Changbin?” 

Felix needs to get better at hiding his smile, but Jisung doesn’t really mean it, because it brightens up the place considerably. 

“He did blood deliveries for Chan not long after I arrived. He was reanimated not long after Jeongin and Hyunjin arrived. The growing numbers were causing concern at that point.”

“He would sneak out to visit you, right?” Jisung asks innocuously, but it doesn’t stop Felix’s face from exploding red. 

“He visited all of us! Not just me. He missed all of us! Or at least…” Felix’s shoulders drop and Jisung is suddenly filled with the ominous feeling that he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “That’s what he says, but to be honest, I think he only says it so I don’t feel guilty for getting him killed.” 

Jisung only knows scraps of what happened, he isn’t going to sit here and pretend that he knows everything, but he knows enough to know that no one here should feel guilty. Especially not Felix. Even if Changbin  _ did _ risk his life to sneak out to see him - that’s Changbin’s decision, and not one that Felix should shoulder the blame.

“What does Changbin say when you say things like that?” 

Felix is taken by surprise, only for his face to flush even more. “He uh - nothing much. Well, he says not to feel guilty. Um, I guess. We don’t usually talk much about it, the conversation usually… evolves into a different conversation.” Felix is so red that Jisung is slightly concerned his skin is going to singe under the burning heat of his flush. Jisung decides to let it go before Felix starts vibrating or something, but it is enough to take the focus of the energy into something more positive, and Jisung diligently helps Felix tidy the remainder of the attic space without any qualms.

Time moves surprisingly fast and it isn’t long until Jisung is crowded up against the breakfast table while the traffic through the kitchen at lunchtime almost runs him over. Changbin misjudges his size and accidentally shoulders Jisung, making him fall into Seungmin’s side, who hardly regards the incident, simply rewriting the scribble that Jisung had accidentally sent careening half way across the page. 

Jisung apologises and pats Seungmin’s shoulder, then tugs his hand back to his chest because his brain suddenly said  _ SQUEEZE IT SQUEEZE IT _ which is just highly inappropriate - but also Jisung kind of almost did it. His brian is rotting away with all the ridiculousness that’s been happening. Felix sets a place of sliced apple in front of Seungmin, who thanks him genuinely in reply, only to rebuke it when Felix wraps his arms around his neck and rubs their heads together. 

Felix suddenly shouts at Jeongin to get away from the stove and leaves Seungmin back to punching at the calculator in peace. 

Afraid to get trampled, Jisung carefully slips into the chair beside Seungmin. Seungmin wordlessly moves the plate between them, and Jisung isn’t one to refuse an offer of food - even if it is  _ apples _ _.  _ On Halloween no less. The flavour is bitter and the skin has some browning dimples - they’re homegrown, unlike an apple he’s tasted from the supermarket before. 

In the hustle and bustle of the tiny kitchen, where bodies collide and press up side-by-side, the lines between who is who blurring as Hyunjin wraps himself over Felix’s frame, no one can hear Seungmin when he leans forward, lowering his pen neatly to the table. “Did you have fun with Felix?” 

“Yeah. He’s really nice.” 

Seungmin gives a small genuine smile. Jisung tries not to choke on his apple. “I know it’s a little scary at first. But they’re all nice, even Minho - but don’t tell him I said that.” 

“Tell him I said what?” Jisung does choke on his apple this time and no one comes to save him. He splutters it out eventually and can only give a glare in the spector’s direction - although with red, watering eyes, it really doesn’t give the desired effect.

Seungmin ignores the question, instead shifts himself so Minho is able to look over his shoulder. He shows him the pad of paper he had been dutifully punching numbers into, glasses slipping down his nose every so often. “Here is the budget for this month, can you look over it?” 

Minho leans seriously over Seungmin. His eyes scan the page quickly, clearly well accustomed to the song and dance. The pen suddenly floats out of Seungmin’s hand and trails down the list, his eyebrows growing taut in confusion. “Nothing from the butcher’s for Binnie?” 

“He’s going to have to either eat rice like the rest of us this week or be a more diligent hunter.” Minho sucks his teeth, reading down the list more. The pen circles something - Jisung can’t read upside down.

“It looks good, but take this off and use that for the food budget. I can call the car insurance company to cancel. No one’s driven that thing in years.”

“Felix and Changbin drove to my store with Chan last week,” Jisung supplies. 

“It’s for emergencies,” Seungmin agrees. 

Minho rolls his eyes. “There’s seven people in this house and not a driving license between us, why would we bother paying for car insurance when anyone driving is going to be illegal anyway? If you’re gonna break a law might as well save money and break two.” 

Seungmin thinks about it, then scribbles the note away. “You’ve got a point,” He says. He crunches the numbers again, looking a little more pleased at the result. 

“Is there enough to get me fresh lamb?” Chanbin slaps heavy hands on Seungmin’s shoulders. He leans forward and pretends to bite Seungmin’s ear. Seungmin tries to wrestle him off, only to end up slamming his elbow on the edge of the table and yelping in pain. Minho rolls his eyes and floats away. 

“Why do I need to buy you fresh lamb when there’s a forest full of free food?” Seungmin complains. 

Changbin only sighs, as if the answer is obvious. “Because, Seung-min,” He pronounces Seungmin’s name nasally and mockingly, “I just cleaned the shed.” Seungmin grimaces.

“I’ve seen your standard of clean. I doubt one fox will make much of a difference,” He says casually. He quickly snaps a picture of the budget on his phone then crumples the paper and shoots it into the trash. It misses and Jeongin laughs loudly at his expense. 

“There’s also a bedroom full of  _ delicious _ humans…” Changbin sniffs the air obscenely and wiggles his fingers in Jisung’s direction. Jisung is a little surprised at how unafraid he is, even after the grotesque image of Changbin gnawing at Seungmin’s arm, and the gentle scarring that shines when the light hits it. 

“You might need to wash me first, my bed is awfully dusty,” Jisung grins. Hyunjin and Jeongin, sandwiched on either side of Felix at the stove, begin snickering. Even without his glasses, Jisung sees the tips of Felix’s ears turn around, although his determination to pretend he doesn’t hear is impressive. Jisung’s attention is grabbed instead by Seungmin’s sunny laughter, tickling Jisung’s ears. 

Changbin himself turns a few shades darker - looking almost alive. “Well, I guess it must be clothes you’ve been given. There was nothing wrong with the bed.” And like that, Changbin marches out of the kitchen. By the time Jisung sees him through the window opening the door of the shed, Changbin has his hand checking the temperature of his flushed cheek with alarm. 

Felix also mumbles an excuse to leave, although he exits through the front door, something about his vegetable patch. 

“Those two…” Hyunjin laughs, although he groans into his laughter, “Did anyone else not get a wink of sleep last night?” 

“If it’s not Felix and Changbin, then it’s your loud-ass dog,” Jeongin says, throwing random vegetables into a pot with no regard for anything. Hyunjin pulls a face.

“They’re young and dumb, leave them be - I think it’s cute.” Minho floats down from the ceiling. A carrot floats in the air and slaps the laughter out of Jeongin and Hyunjin by the side of the head. 

Seungmin grimaces at the comment, disgusted by the thought of them being  _ cute. _ Cute may be a loose term - but Felix is cute, and maybe the way Changbin venemotely denies it is cute too. Maybe it’s a  _ little  _ cute. Only the tiniest bit. 

“You only think it’s cute because you get to pester them,” Seungmin says. 

Minho’s face pulls into a dangerous one - Jisung has seen the face of mayhem too often in his short life. “Ah, really? I guess you’re right, Minnie. Such a smart boy,” He says sweetly, examining his nails. “So Jisung-” Why does he always get dragged into this? Seriously? Sitting here… eating apples, minding his business, and yet he’s being dragged into whatever silent storm Minho is brewing.

“Um, yes?” Jisung’s skin prickles with Minho’s sweet smile. Terrifying. 

“You’ve only been here one night and you’re already wearing Seungminnie’s clothes?” Jisung cocks his head and pulls at the hoodie. Seungmin gave it to him in the morning, warning him about the cold that seeps in through the old walls. It was a warm thing, soft and clearly well-worn if the fraying sleeves are any indication. There’s a little heart on the sleeve, which is cute, and a big one in the center of the chest. It’s a little cutesy for Jisung’s taste - but Hyunjin had said it suited him, and who was he to argue? 

Jisung doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but Seungmin dips his head and fights a smattering of pink on his cheeks. “What else was I going to give him? It’s cold,” He says from somewhere in his nose. 

“Oh I don’t know… maybe the spare clothes I stocked in the dresser? Or are they dusty too?” Seungmin, to his credit, didn’t respond. Jisung can’t help but thumb the worn cuffs of the hoodie. The jab was meant for Seungmin, but Jisung felt more of a victim. He dutifully eats his apple slices and avoids Minho’s smug face.

The afternoon came and went, the comforting hustle and bustle eventually grew on Jisung. His ears stopped twitching at every random noise and voice that echoed through the old house. He grew used to bodies passing him and a montage of pleasant faces passing by, going about their own chores and duties of the day. Chan had woken up some early hours of the evening, roused by the loud banging of Hyunjin and Jeongin attempting to cook dinner, which resulted in more noise pollution than progress until Minho sighed from the book he was reading in the living room and walked through the walls to give the two some direction. 

It’s interesting to see what these people get up to on their down time. Seungmin, as expected, is cross-legged on the chair, switching between reading some book that looks way too thick to be enjoyable and playing games on his phone. Apparently he’s training so he can beat Felix, who is the resident racing champion. Changbin had fallen asleep in front of the fire he was meant to be attending, the flames sinking into burning embers that Seungmin keeps getting up to rouse back to life with limited success.

The living room is another eclectic collection of furniture. The seat Seungmin is sitting in is a great hulking thing, probably older than the two of them put together. The sofa that Jisung is sharing with Changbin is thin-legged and angular, something straight out of some retro-sixties’ cartoon. Coffee table with aged grooves, carpet whose patterns are unidentifiable from wear, a cabinet with ornate glass windows - clearly some decanter intended to display expensive whiskeys and crystals tumblers instead boasts beat-up board games and little supernatural memorabilia: a comedic vampire figurine; a little plush sheet-ghost; a ceramic pair of green-faced witches cackling over a bubbling cauldron; a garden statuette of a pretty fairy blowing a dandelion into the wind; a zombie pop vinyl figure; and a little lego man. Jisung can’t help but laugh when he notices it, Seungmin glances over and snorts. 

“Chan discovered Ebay,” He explains. Jisung hums and pulls his attention away, poking the struggling fire with a frown. He adds a log, hoping that the wood will catch.

A sudden commotion upstairs wakens Changbin with a heavy snort, reaching out and blinking at his surroundings, but Jisug focuses more on the doorway, as if looking at the entranceway will help him hear the arguing in better detail. At first, Jisung had thought it was just another random noise from someone - the house is a loud one, after all, but after a few moments of the noise he hears the music from Seungmin’s app pause. Seungmin is listening with a frown. 

“It’s Chan and Felix,” Seungmin says. He casts a look at Changbin, who looks equally as confused as Jisung feels.

“I don’t know. They’re arguing in English - Felix only does that when he’s  _ really _ pissed off,” Changbin’s eyes are wide. It’s an unprecedented situation. Jisung can only catch a short snippet of the conversation, the pair conversing too quickly with unrestrained accents coating the words in a draw that Jisung isn’t used to yet. But nonetheless, Jisung can hardly believe that the deep shouts are coming from the red-faced boy he helped clear the attic with, or the bright-smiled face that cuts up fruit for his friends when they’re too focused on other things to feed themselves. 

Seungmin locks his phone, the noise signalling their departure to get to the bottom of the uncharacteristic commotion. Jisung doesn’t move, not wanting to stick his nose in it, but Changbin looks over his shoulder when he realises that Jisung isn’t following them and lifts him effortlessly from the neck of his hoodie. Jisung grapples onto Changbin with his sudden loss of gravity. 

The trio meet Hyunjin and Jeongin, who are glued to the top of the stairs. When they notice the three coming up the stairs, they wave Seungmin over with harsh whispers.

“What are they saying, Seungmin? Felix is talking too fast. I can’t catch anything,” Hyunjin whispers. Seungmin slides between the pair, angling his ear carefully down the hall with a face of concentration. The way Seungmin’s eyebrows furrow isn’t easing the discomfort rising in Jisung’s stomach like bile. Changbin seems to notice it too. Jisung pats his shoulder comfortingly, earning him a small smile. 

Their adorable bro-moment is interrupted by Seungmin swallowing. “Stay here. I need to get closer. I can’t trust what I’m hearing right now… there’s no way…” 

“I speak a little English too,” Jisung says, for some reason. Maybe he wants to make himself useful, maybe he doesn’t want Seungmin to be burdened with translation on his own, but whatever the reason, Seungmin gestures to him to follow him creeping down the hall. 

The door is cracked open a little. Felix is jabbing an accusatory finger in Chan’s direction. The bed acts as a buffer between them, Felix facing the door and Chan standing with his broad back to them. Felix’s other hand is gripped white on the open drawer of the bedside locker. 

_ “But why did you hide it?!”  _ Felix’s tone is low and unsettled.  _ “That’s what I don’t understand, Chris-”  _

_ “Felix, I wasn’t trying to keep anything from anyone! I wanted to research it on my own. I didn’t want anyone to be concerned,” _ Chan argues back. His voice is much more leveled, but the volume rises to meet Felix’s.

_ “I know what this is just by looking at it, Chan! You know I would’ve known what it was - or do you think I’m incompentant? Is that it?” _

_ “Of course not!” _

_ “So you admit it,”  _ Felix's voice dips lowly. A quiet thrum of bass that makes Jisung’s hair stand up on its end.  _ “You know I would have known the inscription and decided to hide it from us anyway. You didn’t want us to worry? You don’t get to decide that for us. You don’t get to decide what we should and shouldn’t know about what happens in our own FUCKING CLAN.” _

The air falls deathly silent. Felix’s nostrils are flaring with the effort to restrain himself. Chan has nothing to say for himself. Jisiung’s tongue feels dry in his mouth. He feels like he shouldn’t be witnessing the clash of heads, but his curiosity will always win. Seungmin’s hand finds his own, and Jisung starts. 

Seungmin is looking at the mess before him with upset clearly written on his face. No one likes it when their family fights. Jisung understands. Jisung gives Seungmin’s hand a reassuring squeeze and tries not to overthink the fact that Seungmin reached to  _ him _ for comfort. This isn’t the time. 

_ “So, did you find what you were looking for? Or did you just shove the dagger in the back of the cupboard to grow rust?”  _

Chan is silent for a long time. But to his credit, he answers honestly.  _ “I didn’t.” _

Felix laughs mirthfully. It sounds borderline hysterical, and Jisung can hear Changbin making a low groaning noise from the stairwell.  _ “Well, I’ll tell you then. The blade itself is crafted with charmed Iron and the inscription? It’s Black Magic. It’s an inscription to cut off manna in the body - wherever the blade touches, manna will shy away from. The person - they stabbed you with this first, right? Then they used a stake. That’s why I couldn’t help you - that’s why nothing worked.”  _ Felix pulls the knife from the dresser, throwing it onto the bed. 

Jisung’s world tips on its axis. 

The inscription catches the light. It gleams mockingly at Jisung. It blinds everything else in his view. 

“I sold that.” It comes from Jisung’s mouth a choked whisper. He didn’t mean it to come out, but when it did, he remembers the very important part of the story he missed on his retelling from the night before.

“You what?” Seungmin’s eyes are wide, voice quiet. Pleading Jisung to tell him he heard it wrong.

Felix’s voice carries a terrible, terrible omen came to fruition. It seeks Jisung out and wrings around his gut in a tightening belt. Jisung wants to puke.  _ “This thing is why you almost died.” _

“I sold that dagger to a woman the day Chan was stabbed,” Jisung’s voice wobbles as the words fall out of his mouth. 

Jisung feels the sudden storm of icy breeze before he sees Minho materialise in all his fury before him. His hair whips as the air settles into something threatening. The door swings open with the force of Minho’s materialisation and it slams into the wall, bringing all attention to Jisung, now on his back with Minho hovering over him.   
“You did what?!” Minho’s voice carries across the house like nothing human. It echoes along the farthest cobwebbed corners and rattles the windows in their old frames. “You sold a  _ Hunter’s Dagger _ ?!” 

Jisung feels hands under his armpits, then the wood passing under him as he is dragged out of Minho's fury. Maybe it’s the shock, maybe it’s the horrible taste of  _ anger _ in the air, but Jisung clings onto the body behind him, and secure arms tighten around his waist. 

Minho starts to float forward, but Seungmin breaks his trajectory with his own body, eyes sharp. “Let him talk, hyung. He’s human, right? He doesn’t know anything.” 

The knife continues to gleam its toothy grin his way. Mocking him. Jisung sold the thing that almost murdered Chan. Chan almost died because of him. This house of rag-tags brought together under a paternal leadership was almost torn into shreds because of him. The realisation was so terrible that Jisung almost threw up, but hands gently found his own and squeezed. Big hands that have calluses on the pointer finger from writing so much. Hands that have trimmed, practical nails. Hands that are quick enough to entwine amongst Jisung’s fingers at the slip of a chance.

“I’m sorry,” Jisung swallows. Seungmin’s face is an endless well of reassurance whenever Jisung has the courage to open his eyes. He doesn’t look at their hands - he can’t. 

“I know. What happened?” 

“I found it when I was cleaning, it was - it was shoved in the back of some cabinet so I put it on display - I didn’t know it was bad! I thought it was just a fancy old knife. This lady - the one from the grocery store - she came in and bought it! She was really weird about it I should’ve realised - I’m sorry-” 

“The grocery store?” Seungmin asks. “Jisung, the one down the street?”

Jisung looks around, all eyes are on him, awaiting his nod. The bodies sag when he nods, the energy dying from bristling anger to exhaustion. Chan stands behind Seungmin now, rubbing his back in comforting circles, although Jisung suspects it’s more for Chan’s comfort than Seungmin’s.

“The man that came in was her husband. That’s what he said.” 

Seungmin and Chan share a look. “It sounds like that couple that got kicked off the police force.”

Chan nods. “It has to be. I didn’t see who did it but… the smell lingered for days. They’re the only people in the town I can think of with souls that rotten.” 

No one moves, not even the body that Jisung is slotted with. All he sees are glassy eyes and the sinking suspicion in his stomach that things are only going to get a lot worse before they get any better. He doesn’t even care about himself in this equation. If things all turn to shit Jisung can easily pack up and move back to Seoul, or even back in with his parents. But the people here don’t have that luxury. Their entire life is within the four ancient walls of this house, in a town that hates them for nothing but their existence. Jisung never claims to be selfless, but how could he sit here and think about himself in this moment? Instead, he finds himself almost growing to tears at the consequences of his actions. Single-handedly, Jisung’s ignorance has pulled the rug out from this already unstable clan. 

“Oh, Jisung,” Chan empathises. Unexpectedly, he reaches for Jisung, and it takes Jisung a horror-stricken moment to realise that Chan is going in for a  _ hug _ and not to end his pathetically short life. Jisung, even more unexpectedly, wraps his arms around the body and squeezes his eyes shut in the safety of his neck. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. None of us blame you.”

“But-”

“No buts.” The voice behind him says. It sinks into his ears like honey and Jisung finds himself relaxing further into Hyunjin’s long form. 

“Yeah, Changbin has enough butt for all of us,” Jeongin says. It’s a little airy and fighting off the tells of discomfort, but it makes Chan laugh. Jisung almost gets a broken rib from Chan’s chest colliding with his own. Vampires are  _ strong. _

“I wonder how witch tastes~” Changbin growls. Jeongin lets out a squeal when Changbin grabs him. Chan pulls away. Seungmin is still there. Seungmin is still holding his hands. Jisung wants to tug him in for a hug too, but he doesn’t because he would  _ never  _ hear the end of it - and as proof of his concerns, Minho pipes up, all cool and collected as if he hadn’t almost flung a door off its hinges.

“Shouldn’t you already know how witch tastes?” 

Felix, for all his yelling earlier, had been silent until this point. When all he can contribute is a painful-sounding, “Hyung!” 

Jisung is pulled to his feet by Seungmin. Chan instructs them to all go downstairs for an emergency meeting, needing to talk some things over with Felix first. The stairs creak and groan under the small army of feet trekking down it. Seungmin hadn’t once let go of Jisung’s hand, and when they get to the living room, Seungmin guides Jisung to the couch, where he sneaks their entwined fingers into the pocket of the hoodie as subtly as possible. 

Chan’s words echo endlessly in Jisung’s head.

_ It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. _

Jisung rests his head on Seungmin’s shoulder and lets his eyes drift shut, his exhaustion finally catching up to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have another fic that wasn't meant to be over 30k. Sigh. This is becoming my brand.
> 
> Thank you for reading!! And I'd love to hear what you think in the comments! ~~~ Kiwi 🥝
> 
> [[I have a skz discord server so i can actually talk to some skz fans, because i dont use any other social media! Feel free to join, it's super relaxed!]]  
> 🥝 https://discord.gg/Rm87XF6RXs 🥝


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